#I know this isn’t super detailed but I’m also not the best with the history cuz it jumbles in my brain :(

[suzena]

Complete Dead Apple Explanation

Or: “The Ultimate Guide to Dead Apple”.

Warning: this is a long post! I’m not kidding, I worked on this for three months. There is a TL;DR at the end but it will only briefly cover the most important points.

I see posts about Dead Apple not being understood far too often and so I’m introducing: this explanation! I do want to preface this by saying that I can completely understand that this movie can be confusing. Or, as Fyodor said it:

But, as someone who has seen it many times, I’m here to shed some light on it! Hopefully after this post it’ll all make a bit more sense, and you’ll at least have different questions.

If you haven’t watched the movie yet and are wondering when to watch it, the story officially takes place between season two and three, though you’ll be able to watch season three with no issues if you haven’t watched the movie. Please do note that this post will contain light spoilers for the plot after season two, so don’t read it if you haven’t at least finished catching up to the anime.

I’ll try not to summarize the movie, but instead explain it. That means that this post does not replace the movie, but instead tries to elaborate upon it and tries to place it in the larger plot. Most of the early movie is therefore ignored, but please do not hesitate to ask if you have extra questions, comments, different interpretations or you want me to go into more detail about something. I may not know everything, but I’m always down to talk about this movie!

Alright, with all of that out of the way…

The Dragon Head Conflict

We’ll start at the beginning, which is to say, we’ll start at the prologue, which can be found as a permanent event in Mayoi (and also as a part of the Dead Apple manga). This is not technically needed to understand most of the movie, but it does give some context that will make it a little easier, since this is where it all starts. 

The Dragon Head Conflict, sometimes also translated as the Ryuuzu Conflict, is (as the movie states) the largest conflict in the history of Yokohama’s underworld. It took place six years ago, and originally was about five hundred billion yen an ability user left behind after they died, which various organizations were very interested in. It lasted for a total of 88 days, and involved conflict between eight different underworld organizations, including among others the Port Mafia, Gelhart Security Service/GSS (from Fifteen) and Takasekai (also from Fifteen).

Now as you can imagine, the government isn’t super stoked that gangs are shooting each other up all night and leaving corpses everywhere, to the point where the sidewalk is torn up from the bullet holes. To try to combat this, they thought that they could best fight fire with fire, and let a strong ability user from outside Yokohama settle this conflict all at once.

This new ability user, known as the “White Qilin”, unfortunately doesn’t really care about ending the conflict and kills other strong ability users left and right just for the fun of it, contrary to what the government had hoped he would do. Whether they are uninvolved parties or Port Mafia executives, it doesn’t matter to this guy. The White Qilin also ends up taking the money the conflict was originally about, but that doesn’t stop his murder spree. In this way, the White Qilin gains control over the entire conflict pretty fast, making him the main target to eliminate in order to put a stop to the killings.

Dazai approaches this problem similarly as to how he did during the conflict of Stormbringer, with a group of ability users to overpower the lone individual, but gets his plan twisted on him and gets kidnapped instead. Naturally, he predicted this outcome, leaving a hint for Chuuya where he left a transmitter for a tracking device so that Chuuya could come rescue him. 

This is then the first scene of the movie, where Dazai and Chuuya confront and defeat the White Qilin using Corruption, and the whole Dragon Head Conflict ends since the White Qilin is finally gone and all the money burned. This battle is so iconic in the underground circles that it gains them the name “Double Black”, or “Soukoku”.

A few small notes on the Dragon Head Conflict before we move on.

As can also be seen in the first scene of the movie, this is where Oda adopts all five of those kids you see during the Dark Age, which was also already stated in the Dark Age itself. 

“I heard all about it, Odasaku. You’re raising five kids, huh? And not only that, they’re orphans from the Dragon’s Head Conflict.” ―Dazai, Dark Age

Also, ever wondered why the Port Mafia is the only major criminal organization in Yokohama? There actually used to be five in total but four of them completely perished during the Dragon Head Conflict. Another reason why Dazai & Chuuya ending the conflict is so impressive, since because of that the Port Mafia is the only one to even survive it at all.

Shibusawho?

As you’ve probably guessed by now, the “White Qilin”, also named “the Collector” in Dead Apple itself, are both different names for our main antagonist: Shibusawa Tatsuhiko. The government had good reason to believe Shibusawa would be able to stand against the entire Yokohama underground and come out on top: his ability.

Shibusawa’s ability, Draconia, creates a fog around him, which separates other ability users from their own ability and makes non-ability users disappear as long as the fog persists. When surrounded by this fog, ability users are confronted with this version of their ability that is split from themselves. If an ability user is to die within this fog, their ability will be added to Draconia’s collection room.

There is decent evidence that it takes a while before the fog activates, so the effect isn’t immediate. This can be seen with Chuuya, who makes very short contact with the fog before he lifts up the building that he shoves in the Dragon’s mouth, but it’s seen even more clearly with Atsushi and Kyouka at the start of the movie. They spend a small while running around Yokohama wondering why everyone is gone before they’re finally confronted with their abilities.

To some extent the separated abilities represent the inner conflict in an ability user. This can of course be clearly found in Atsushi and his shaky connection to the tiger, or in Kyouka who has Demon Snow which is the last remnant of her parents but also murdered them in front of her. But the clearest example of this in the movie is actually Kunikida, since there is a visible change between him and his ability.

The notebook of Kunikida’s ability does not read its usual “理想” (ideals), but instead now says “妥協” (compromise). For Kunikida, a person so tied to his ideals, this version of his ability is an “abomination” (his words, not mine), and thus a source of inner conflict, since it represents a side of Kunikida that he carries within him.

“A copy of himself that didn’t follow ideals but made compromises was an abomination to Kunikida.”―Dead Apple (light novel)

If ability users manage to defeat their abilities in a physical fight, and then also accept these parts of themselves for what they represent, they will regain their ability. For example, Atsushi does not immediately regain his ability after defeating the tiger because he does not completely accept that the tiger represents that he has killed a person. For Atsushi, a person who connects his entire reason of living to saving other people, this is nearly irreconcilable. The only reason he probably is able to get over it in the end is that the person he killed was actively torturing and trying to kill him, so Atsushi had to kill to survive.

Shibusawa, then, is dead. Chronologically, his murder is the earliest you see of him. Fyodor has told Shibusawa that Atsushi contains something that “guides the envy of all ability users”, so Shibusawa, who feels like he is missing something, seeks to take this by any means. This doesn’t work out too hot for him, and Atsushi kills him.

Now a fun thing happens. Since Shibusawa is the center of the fog at all times, so to speak, and he’s the keeper of the abilities that die in his fog, his ability is separated from himself and lives on, nearly indistinguishable from his original body. Only one downside to this: he completely loses his memories.

I can only assume the government steps in at this point to take this strong ability user in his vulnerable state, and then have him solve the Dragon Head Conflict not long after. He most likely also survived Chuuya’s Corruption by being an ability, and having ability crystals in his collection to fall back on and recover, as he also does in Dead Apple. However, all of that is just pure speculation.

After the Dragon Head Conflict, Shibusawa spends some years abroad, casually killing thousands of ability users for the same reason as during the Dragon Head Conflict: just playing around and trying to fill that hole of something that is missing inside of him. The Japanese government mostly does a spectacular and spectacularly unethical job of cleaning up after him, since they learned nothing from the Dragon Head Conflict and still think that they can control him to protect Japan should it ever be invaded by foreign ability users.

Eventually, when the timing is right, Shibusawa gets invited back to Japan by Dazai. At the same time he is told by Fyodor (can you see the manipulation happening on both sides?) that Dazai’s ability is the ultimate ability that will finally complete him, and so Shibusawa eagerly comes to Yokohama. 

From here on out, as far as Shibusawa is concerned, it’s just a matter of covering the entire city in fog, killing Dazai and then taking his ability. Since Dazai cancels the fog itself with his ability, Shibusawa does need to kill him first, since the fog will work just fine on a corpse. Unfortunately, Shibusawa, however smart he is, is not in control of the plot in this movie. That control is left entirely to the combination of Dazai and Fyodor.

Intermezzo: Singularity Crash Course

Let’s do a lightning quick crash course on singularities before continuing, because you’re going to need that to understand what is happening in the next part. While Stormbringer was released after Dead Apple, I’m still going to be leaning heavily on and paraphrasing the information provided in that novel since it gives a really nice overview.

Abilities are bound to rules, just like everything else. No organisms other than humans, such as plants or monkeys, can possess an ability. Each human can only have a single ability, and when they die the ability disappears with them. Finally, there is a limit to the strength of any such ability.

But what if you wanted to go beyond that limit? What if you wanted to play with the natural laws of this world? What if you wanted to get really silly with it? Well, in that case, you can try your best at creating a singularity.

Singularities are defined as “the interaction of multiple abilities that develops into a higher-level phenomenon different from the original abilities”. This mostly exhibits itself in a massive release of energy, but rarely there are semi-stable versions of them. Singularities aren’t bound to conventional rules, and can be much more powerful for that exact reason.

As for creating singularities, there are two defined ways. The most reliable method is to have two contradicting abilities clash with each other. This leads to fun mental exercises, think “unstoppable force meets immovable object”, or, two ability users who can both see a few seconds into the future fighting to the death (sound familiar?). As a second method, an ability can also contradict itself, essentially causing the same result, but it’s a lot more finicky.

“Dead Apple”

The latter part of the movie revolves around exactly the creation of such a singularity, as all planned out by Fyodor, and accurately anticipated by Dazai. Let’s lay out all the layers of this.

Shibusawa is after Dazai’s ability. Meanwhile, Dazai is trying to stop the fog to save Yokohama. As for Fyodor, we’ll get to him in a second.

Dazai “teams up” with Fyodor and betrays Shibusawa to put a stop to the fog. The idea of this is that Fyodor combines two abilities from Shibusawa’s collection, which Dazai can’t do himself without canceling them: the ability to pull abilities in a surrounding area close, and the ability to merge abilities together. When these two are merged, together they create an ability that will absorb Shibusawa’s entire collection, and then Dazai only has to touch this ability to effectively get rid of Shibusawa’s power source.

There is a specific reason why it has to happen like this, and Dazai just touching Shibusawa isn’t quite enough. Let’s mentally walk through the process if Dazai were to touch Shibusawa. The fog disappears for a bit (and Shibusawa with it, most likely), but Shibusawa now knows Dazai’s intentions. Fyodor will take Shibusawa’s side and now Dazai is at a large disadvantage. Ultimately, it doesn’t even solve the problem. We know from the Dragon Head Conflict that just destroying Shibusawa’s body is most likely not enough, and he will be able to resummon the fog (and his body) with time and energy. The problem needs to be cut off at the root, the ability crystals.

Unfortunately, Fyodor didn’t really team up with Dazai, instead choosing to team up with Shibusawa in order to get rid of Dazai. This is then where Shibusawa gets to kill Dazai, and discovers that wait, Dazai’s ability may not be what he’s seeking after all. However, the abilities are already merged, and Dazai’s ability joins them. This combines “the ability to merge” with “the ability to nullify”, which don’t exactly mix well. Does Dazai’s ability become part of the other ability? Does his ability nullify the merging ability before that can happen? It’s already part of it, but at the same time the merging can never happen. It’s contradictory, and thus a singularity is born.

Fyodor, meanwhile, hasn’t quite had his fill of betrayal yet, and decides to remind Shibusawa of what he is by killing him, reminding Shibusawa of his earlier death by Atsushi’s paw. All of this, killing Dazai and using his ability to create a singularity, having that power from the singularity then go into Shibusawa to create the Dragon, all of that was part of Fyodor’s plan. Shibusawa is only able to cover an entire city with fog because of the large amount of ability crystals he has collected, and so with enough power (like from a singularity) he can cover the entire world in this fog. Up until this point, neither Fyodor nor Shibusawa have seen a single ability user survive the fog, and thus it is the perfect method for getting rid of all ability users in the world, which does seem to be Fyodor’s end goal.

However, Chuuya swoops in and defeats the Dragon. Dazai was well prepared and had the antidote to the poison he was killed with hidden in his mouth, so he is alive and well again. That means that Dazai has his ability back and it cancels out the singularity space they both are in. It doesn’t completely get rid of the Dragon however, as some energy still lingers around the tower. 

Fyodor is still on the scene, and uses a part of the merging crystal that he saved which was used earlier to create the singularity to merge Shibusawa with the singularity, giving Shibusawa a very anime transformation into his final form.

At this point, as a result of Shibusawa’s transformation, the fog turns red. If this red fog then covers the entire planet as Fyodor is hoping, and you were to watch it from space, it would look just like a poisonous red apple. The name of the movie therefore refers to this plan of using Shibusawa to rid the world of ability users.

This idea of poisonous apples in this movie comes from two different sources. From Fyodor’s side, it is referring to the apple Eve ate in the Bible, the original sin. For Fyodor, there is poetic irony in this: the world will end with the same sin as it began with. The crime is the punishment. On Dazai’s side, it refers to Snow White, who bit the poison apple and died (temporarily). He already talks about this to Oda when he is sixteen, vaguely implying he knew all of this was coming as soon as he met Shibusawa during the Dragon Head Conflict. Since Fyodor was already around at that time and also had a hand in enabling Shibusawa originally, this may indeed be planned out this far in advance, but it’s always hard to tell with these guys.

Then the kids take over the fight for the rest of the movie, and Atsushi, Akutagawa and Kyouka work together to defeat Shibusawa’s final form in the form of a long, epic final fight. Shibusawa is finally defeated and it all ends happily ever after. 

The End.

Byakko VS The Dragon

…Or is it? You thought we covered the entire basic layer of the movie, so we’re done now, right? Think again! This is only where things start to become really interesting. Please note that this section will take some ideas that were already pointed out by other people, and build on those.

When looking at lore relevance of characters, Atsushi may not immediately spring to mind as one of the most important ones. Sure, he’s the protagonist of the main manga, but in comparison to the mystery surrounding Dazai or Fyodor he fades a little into the background.

Even in this post, an explanation about a movie that’s basically about Atsushi, I’m able to explain the basics of the movie without mentioning him much at all. And yet, the movie’s core conflict is not between Shibusawa, Dazai and Fyodor, but between Shibusawa and Atsushi.

While there isn’t a lot of information given about Shibusawa’s and Atsushi’s connection, what we do get is very interesting. Shibusawa is consistently referred to as a Dragon during Dead Apple, and while subtitles usually translate everything as “tiger”, Atsushi’s tiger is actually referred to as “Byakko” half of the time. 

Now what is the difference between any good ol’ normal tiger and the Byakko, I hear you ask. The Byakko is much more than an ordinary tiger, since it is part of the 四神 (shijin/ shishin), the Four Guardians of the Four Compass Directions, which the Dragon is also a part of. What you essentially need to know from this is that the Byakko belongs to the same group of creatures as the Dragon, and that this solidifies Shibusawa’s status as Atsushi’s foil in this movie.

It also allows us to make a direct comparison between Shibusawa and Atsushi. The thing is, I have been lying to you a little bit. So far, I’ve been calling the Dragon a singularity. The truth is, it may not be. I know, I know, if it’s not a singularity, then what was that whole Dragon thing about?

Fyodor actually specifically tells us that the Dragon isn’t a singularity, but instead it’s “the true form of the chaos born from abilities”. (Note here that the Dead Apple light novel talks about Fyodor as if he is “reciting some Oracle”. Did Fyodor get this information from someone else?) Is this related to why Fyodor wants abilities gone from this world? Is there another layer to abilities and other creatures that BSD hasn’t even touched upon (think Lovecraft)? It’s hard to say at this point. All we can say is that the Dragon gets referred to as something else, and… that the Dragon is similar to the Byakko.

The tiger ability we see that got separated from Atsushi in the movie actually doesn’t follow the rules the other abilities do. It has a clearly defined face, and the red gem is not on its forehead. The gem found on the ability tiger is also red, which is in line with the other extracted abilities we see, but what gets extracted from Atsushi by Shibusawa is this blue cube. The weirdness continues in the flashback we see of Atsushi being tortured by Shibusawa. 

We see Atsushi’s ability leave him, but then in a flash of self protection instinct, he partially transforms into the tiger, claws and all, while the blue gem is outside of his body. Earlier in the movie it is shown that if an ability is extracted from an ability user, they no longer have access to the powers of that ability. Then how is Atsushi able to use his tiger abilities here? 

Granted, there is a bit of conflicting information within the movie about this, since during the final fight with Shibusawa this blue cube is once again extracted from Atsushi, but now he does lose his tiger powers. Could he resummon the tiger while not in possession of the cube if the situation is dire enough? Is this just a psychological thing because Atsushi is aware of it this time? Who can say. At any rate, this blue cube is connected deeply with Atsushi, but the clues given imply that it may not be the Byakko itself.

“That’s not an ability! That is me!”―Atsushi, reaching out to the blue cube in Dead Apple

To be honest, the movie does very little in explaining anything around Atsushi, instead raising more questions than answers. For that exact reason, the rest of this section will mostly be speculation about one possible angle on Atsushi’s ability that personally makes sense to me, but of course this is only one potential theory.

I do also want to add here that Atsushi personally goes through an arc in this movie from seeing the tiger as something separate to something that is intrinsically part of him. This can also be a reason for this final exclamation of “that’s me!” when he reaches out to the blue cube, but it doesn’t explain everything, which is why we explore an alternate possibility here.

My take on it is that the Byakko and this blue gem that get extracted from Atsushi are not the same thing. With the side note here being that they are probably deeply connected, but not the same regardless. 

My reasoning for this is that everything Atsushi-related you see in Dead Apple makes a little more sense when you consider the Byakko and the blue cube as two separate entities. The Byakko’s gem is red, the cube is blue. The Byakko is framed as something separate from Atsushi, while he claims the cube is not an ability but he himself. Atsushi had access to the Byakko while the blue cube was outside of him. Shibusawa even makes a point of mentioning that the orphanage director, who correctly thought Atsushi was the tiger, had the wrong idea about Atsushi’s ability. The Byakko is definitely Atsushi’s ability, but this blue cube is… something else. 

And yet, the tiger is also deeply connected to whatever this blue gem is. Currently, one theory that makes sense to me is that the tiger is an ability that can be passed on, just like Demon Snow, that has the specific task of protecting the power of this blue gem. So, a two in one deal. Atsushi also gets referred to as “the one holding the Byakko ability” by Ivan, which would be in line with the Byakko being an ability that can be passed on as needed. Shibusawa makes a similar statement, calling Atsushi “the one clad in the Byakko”. Atsushi also has issues controlling his ability before joining the ADA, just like Kyouka and Tsujimura, who both also inherited their abilities. I would love to further speculate on this, but there is so little information on anything relating to this, so anything further would be completely baseless.

However, there is one more different clue given to us by the movie. Namely, what this comparison to the Dragon means for Atsushi as the one holding the Byakko.

Almost in the same breath as Shibusawa is recounting Fyodor’s words about the Dragon being the chaos of all abilities, the holder of the Byakko also gets its own description about its true form: the one opposing all abilities.

This relates to what the blue cube may really be. What Atsushi does to Shibusawa in his final moments is what I essentially believe to be this blue cube’s true power: it completely unravels an ability. The blue power eats up everything supernatural about Shibusawa until only his natural skull is left.

If you think this sounds familiar, it kind of does! I cannot ignore the similarity to Dazai here, though I do have to point out that Dazai can only cancel out an ability, and this blue cube power seems to… completely erase the ability itself, leaving no trace of it. The similarity to Dazai is further found the moment Dazai dies and his ability leaves his body. At first, his ability is white and vaguely similar to the blue cube before deciding that nope, this is just barely not it.

I have a hard time connecting this to anything larger simply because the series does not give a lot of clues on this subject. How did abilities come to be? How is the Book related to that, since it is not an ability or borne from an ability? And how does Atsushi factor into this? 

Shibusawa has been led to Atsushi since he believed Atsushi would grant him something special, something he had been looking for all this time. “That which every ability user desires.” 

This is actually a familiar story! This is not the first time Fyodor has led someone to Atsushi with the premise that he would be able to lead them to what they were seeking. The first two seasons of the anime follow that specific idea, of Fitzgerald wanting Atsushi so he can lead him to the Book.

The tiger as the guide to the Book is something emphasized again and again. While in English it gets translated as “guide”, the original manga panel said “道標（タイガービートル）”, or, “guidepost (pronounced: tiger beetle, in English)”. While this is partially just a funny pun, it also once again points to the tiger specifically as a guide.

It did leave me to wonder about the absence of a certain scene in the series. Fyodor has been sending other people to Atsushi for the entire length of the series, but has never interacted with Atsushi himself. For someone who claims to be looking for the Book, and knows that Atsushi is somehow the guide to the Book, isn’t that a bit weird? Is there a reason Fyodor won’t interact with Atsushi himself? Fyodor knew about Atsushi way before he joined the ADA, so it’s not like Dazai is particularly standing in the way here.

Regardless, this factor that makes Atsushi so special may very well be this blue cube. How does the power to completely undo abilities lead to the Book? Who knows. We simply do not know enough about the Book or the origin of abilities to say more about this. Maybe the true power of the blue cube is something else entirely.

What does all of this mean? Where will it all lead? Only the future (Asagiri) can tell.

The Unexplained and Weird

Welcome to the section I’d fondly refer to as “a collection of things I have no explanation for”. There is plenty of that in this movie, but I do want to touch upon them since not being explainable as of currently does not necessarily mean that they aren’t important in the future. Also, not having an explanation for these things is driving me insane and I need to share in my suffering. Let’s go! :)

Let’s get the big thing out of the way first.

Mukurotoride, my friend, my enemy. For those unaware, Mukurotoride is the name of the large black tower that Shibusawa, Dazai and Fyodor were chilling in for most of the movie. The name gets translated as “Skull Fortress”, but the kanji used gives the name more of a “Dead Man’s Castle” feeling, since it refers to a person long since dead more than a skull. My problem with this tower is as follows: it doesn’t make any sense. Whatsoever.

Why is it there? Fifteen establishes it’s there seven years before the current timeline, so a year before Shibusawa dies. I would’ve accepted it if the tower was a weird side effect of Shibusawa dying or something, but the current facts point towards this tower not having anything to do with Shibusawa at all. It’s also very decayed. How long has it been there? Who put it there? Is it relevant that it’s right next to Suribachi? Or in the Yokohama foreign settlement? (Side note: foreign settlements have not been a thing since 1899. What’s up with Yokohama having a foreign settlement?) No one seems to know anything about this tower, not even in the Japanese community. And then in-universe, everyone also seems okay with this wildly out-of-place tower that looks like it’s made out of human bones being there in the middle of the city? It’s giving me Sky Casino vibes.

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, we can talk about Fyodor’s ability.

I want to start this part by explaining my personal stance on the current Fyodor theories, since it influences how I talk about what is shown of his ability in Dead Apple. There are a bunch of theories about Fyodor having an insta-kill ability that only works on non-ability users. Personally, I don’t subscribe to this theory, and I have multiple reasons for this.

First, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Fyodor’s ability being used. At the end of Cannibalism a cop dies as soon as he touches Fyodor. In the manga abilities don’t have a special shine effect, but in the anime they do. However, in the anime there was no ability-shine here.

A stronger argument, perhaps, is that this happens right in front of Dazai, and Dazai immediately afterwards says he has no clue what Fyodor’s ability could be. He could be lying, of course, but since this is a common enemy he shares with Fitzgerald, who is the one asking him about Fyodor’s ability, I don’t see any reason for him to do so here. The whole murder reads a little bit like Fyodor just putting on a show for Dazai.

Finally, from a narrative viewpoint, killing with a touch is a little… useless? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’s convenient, I guess, when you’re a terrorist who seeks to exterminate part of the global population. But there are many ways to kill a person, and Fyodor has shown time after time that he doesn’t need to rely on an ability to murder people.

The strongest argument for the insta-kill ability in my opinion is Fyodor himself saying “this is my true ability” before killing that kid who was enslaved by Ace. However, this may also be part of something else that is going on with Fyodor, in a way that is perhaps very similar to Atsushi.

Alright. Whether you agree with that or not is up to you. To get back to the movie, there are a few interesting clues provided about Fyodor’s ability.

The first is of course Fyodor’s iconic line when his ability shows up on screen: “Crime and Punishment are close friends.” Everything he says after that point is already referring to Shibusawa again, so this is the only clue he himself is willing to offer up. If we consider that the abilities that get split from their users represent inner conflict, all he is saying here is that he apparently has no inner conflict. Does he know something else about the world? Does he just know who he is? Honestly, I don’t think we’ll get anywhere talking about Fyodor’s mental state.

Then there is the “I am Crime”, spoken by Fyodor holding the skull, and “I am Punishment”, spoken by his ability holding the apple. This one is slightly more straightforward. The ability user being the crime, and the ability the punishment. I’m not 100% sure if this is actually referring to Fyodor himself, or if it’s just about Shibusawa again. The skull (Shibusawa, an ability user) being the crime, and then the apple (covering the world with fog through Shibusawa’s ability, thus punishing ability users) being the punishment makes sense when viewed like this, but it could be that Fyodor is somehow also referring to himself during these lines.

Okay, if Fyodor is apparently not willing to open up, we can gather some more info just from what we can see instead of what we’re told. Most of what this part covers is taken from these excellent posts, but I’ll summarize it here for the sake of completion. Fyodor’s ability looks different compared to most other abilities. Most of the abilities shown in the movie have a blank face without any features, and have their gem on their forehead. The exception to that first part, interestingly enough, is Elise, Mori’s ability. This is most likely because she has physical form as an ability to begin with. Which then raises the question: does Fyodor’s ability also have a physical form outside of the fog? His ability looks identical, so that would imply some sort of clone ability. Next to this, Fyodor’s epithet is “The Conjurer”, which would be in line with him being able to create another copy of himself. (Though I should add here that the Japanese seems to just refer to him as “魔神”, which can be any type of evil spirit. However, if I’m not mistaken, the “Conjurer” should be from the official translation, but let me know if I’m mistaken on that.)

Finally, there is the position of the gem on Fyodor’s ability. Nearly all other abilities have their gem on their forehead, but for some reason Fyodor’s ability has his on his hand. The only other ability that has its gem not on its forehead is… the Byakko. I don’t have an explanation for this one, but the weirdness should be pointed out, since it’s another way in which Fyodor’s ability deviates from the others.

Next to the above, there are two other weird details I want to quickly touch upon.

First, the knives in the apples in the dish in Mukuroride, as well as the apples with a knife in them in general, as they are the theme of this movie. I believe this to be of a more metaphorical touch, so we won’t read too much into it, but it does have physical consequences that tie back to the title as well.

This exact shot is used four times throughout the movie, but with a varying amount of knives stuck in the apples. It starts with one, then two, then three. The room starts with just Dazai, then Shibusawa enters, then Fyodor. With each of them showing up, another knife appears in an apple. This is then a metaphor for these three being the instigators behind the Dead Apple incident. These knives in the apples can also be seen as their calling cards, as they were left both at the bar and at the scene of the crime where that agent was killed who was supposed to meet with Kunikida and Tanizaki. 

In a later scene, it cuts again to this frame, but a knife and the skull has disappeared. These both get taken by Fyodor. The knife is used eventually to kill Shibusawa, but Shibusawa also took one of these knives to kill Dazai with. Either way, these knives that have been in these apples are used to murder, once again corroborating the connection between death and apples.

And finally, the relevance of the moon. 

There are a few impressive shots of the moon in Dead Apple, where the moon is shown to be enormous, to the point where even the light novel points out how extraordinarily large it is. The novel also points out that the blue cube crystal holds a similarity to the moonlight. Just symbolism to show that it’s connected to Atsushi, or something more? The other side of the page in the main series will also only be written on the night… of the next full moon.

The Point of It All

I hear a lot of “Dead Apple doesn’t matter to the plot, just watch it for the Soukoku scenes and move on”. And while I do agree that it’s not mandatory viewing to understand the storyline that corresponds with season three onwards, I do think there is more to Dead Apple than most people give it credit for.

I always like to ask myself after reading a book or watching a movie: “Okay, so what was the point of that? What was I meant to take away from this?”

For example, in essence Stormbringer is a case study on singularities. Likewise, BEAST is a study into the limits of the Book, and all other side stories similarly have a message, however big or small.

So what does Dead Apple establish? Why bother?

I hope by now you agree that Dead Apple seems to be the introduction to explaining more as to what is so special about Atsushi. This seems to go deeper into chapter 28/29 of the manga, or season 2 episode 8 of the anime, where Atsushi also has some weird things going on with the tiger. What this exactly is, or where this seems to be going is unclear for now, but the Dead Apple definitely emphasizes Atsushi’s importance as well as the concept that there can be something more than just abilities.

In-universe, there are also reasons for this conflict to happen.

Most likely both Dazai and Fyodor knew the end result long before the conflict ever started. It’s their reunion in a way, so I suppose they are both seeing how the other’s condition is at the moment. They may even have gathered some intel somehow? It’s almost like collecting metadata, they won’t have a direct conversation about important things, but they try to collect information just by seeing how the other acts, to see if the other lies within prediction.

Aside from that, on Dazai’s side, except for foiling Fyodor’s plan and keeping Yokohama safe, the Shin Soukoku dynamic also gets strengthened, something Dazai is actively working on. On Fyodor’s side, next to giving the whole “eliminating all ability users” a good honest shot, he also gets to collect a lot of intel on the opposing side. For example, Fyodor in Dead Apple gets to see Corruption up close, which may potentially be relevant.

Finally, from a storytelling perspective, it sets up a lot for the third season, especially in character interactions and relationships, e.g. Atsushi & Akutagawa, Dazai & Chuuya, Kyouka, Fukuzawa & Mori. It should be noted that some characters literally have been intentionally regressed to make the ending make more impact. Whether that was a good decision or not is not why I’m here. You should just know that it’s intentional. You could chalk it up to Atsushi losing his ability impacting him and his behavior a lot, if you wanted to justify it somehow. The Order of the Clock Tower also gets its first anime appearance, showing Agatha Christie on screen, who will most likely play a more important role later on. Likewise, Dead Apple is the introduction to Fyodor as a villain, where you get to see him for more than just a few flashes.

Trivia and Fun Details

I suppose this section is skippable. But who doesn’t love trivia? This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything included in this movie, but rather an overview of what I personally caught, understood and thought relevant to include.

The “Dragon Head” in the Dragon Head Conflict refers to a Qilin, which are said to have similar heads to dragons. Since the conflict centered around the White Qilin, this is where that name comes from.

At some point Akutagawa and Kyouka use a mafia code to refer to a passageway. The code “0505” refers back to Atsushi’s birthday.

The symbol ᛟ found on the outfits of the Mukurotoride squad refers to inheritage, since Shibusawa inherited his own ability. More information about that here.

Dazai at some point meows at Fyodor. This is a very sassy way of telling Fyodor that he will personally eradicate all of Fyodor’s rats in Yokohama, including Fyodor himself. (The light novel calls it a “tedious” meow. Lmao.)

The music from Dead Apple seems to be recycled in season three of the anime. I’m guessing to save on budget?

Atsushi’s door that he eventually opens to unlock his hidden memories has its own music motif that shows up every time he thinks about Shibusawa, the fog or his memories associated with killing him. Try to pay attention to this, it’s really cool.

The motif of the door is also a tune that sounds a lot like the track named Dead Apple, further showing Atsushi’s relevance in his movie.

The lyrics of the soundtrack tell their own story. When the Dead Apple plot first takes off and Dazai is at bar Lupin, a song called My Prince plays telling of Snow White who is sleeping and waiting for her prince. However, it seems to be a spin on the classic, where indeed Snow White chose to knowingly bite the apple knowing it was poisoned, in much the same way as Dazai knew he was going to be poisoned in Dead Apple. Le Cheval Noir tells of how bored the singer is, and how nothing is special to them anymore. This plays during the scene where Dazai talks to Shibusawa, showing Shibusawa’s apathy towards everything. Mein Prinz, the song that plays as Dazai gets backstabbed, is nearly exactly the same song as My Prince, but now more dramatic and in German. This is a clue that Dazai saw this coming from before the Dead Apple conflict even started, and it’s now up to Chuuya again to save him. Overall, Dazai is leaning into the Snow White aesthetic hard in Dead Apple.

And finally, a list of everything the light novel insists refers to the theme of poisonous red apples: the red apples with the knives in them, apple suicide, the merged abilities producing a red sphere, the singularity that results from that in all its forms and the planet covered in red fog. If it’s red and spherical, you can just assume it should represent a deathly apple.

TD;DR

Recapped extremely briefly:

The Dragon Head Conflict introduces Shibusawa as a villain who was kept by the government but went off the rails. Shibusawa’s ability is a fog that splits ability users from their abilities. If ability users die, Shibusawa obtains their ability. Shibusawa died and inherited his own ability, also causing him to lose his memory. Therefore he wants to obtain Dazai's ability in order to gain what he feels he lacks. Dazai betrays Shibusawa together with Fyodor by combining abilities. However, Shibusawa kills Dazai first, adding Dazai's ability to the merged abilities creating a singularity. Fyodor kills Shibusawa, causing him to regain his memory of being previously killed by Atsushi. A dragon is created and defeated, and Fyodor's plan is revealed to be the covering of the entire planet in Shibusawa's fog, killing all ability users. This plan is foiled, but Atsushi is shown to have potentially another power next to his ability (the tiger). This power is possibly the ability to completely unravel abilities, and may be what makes Atsushi the guide to the Book. Mukurotoride is completely left unexplained in the movie, but there are clues given about Fyodor's ability that point away from an insta-kill ability, and more towards a clone type ability.

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd dead apple #dead apple #bsd analysis #bungou stray dogs analysis #posted this also on reddit but. i forgor to post it on here. whoopsie. #glad i got this all written out though #like a weight lifted from my shoulders #this is actually longer than the reddit version so rejoice! you're getting the premium version #here's to hoping it shows up in the tags! 🙏🏻 #suzenanalysis

[gogandmagog]

✨Anne Blythe’s (Anne Shirley-Blythe’s namesake granddaughter) father is not Jem. It’s Shirley. It’s totally Shirley, you guys. It’s gotta be.✨

And like, Ieading right off by saying of course there’s no definitive answer to be had here, since Maud obviously isn’t available to confirm or refute any hypothesises, but I do big persist in suggesting that a very rational case can be presented for Shirley... one that at least outweighs what I now see as the generally baseless widely accepted assumption that Anne is Jem’s daughter. Keep in mind, I’m in no way trying to dog on this. The assumption is ready and easy to make, and I’d accepted fully this theory too, until about a week agooo.

ABOUT A WEEK AGO, I was poring over various Wikipedia entries for the Anne book series, and inevitably also ended up looking through the edit history of those pages. While sorting through the edit history (super extensive and interesting, by the way), the username ‘blefebvre’ popped into the archive, contributing a ton of information to the Anne pages overall, around 2008 and 2009 particularly. And literally, who else could this user be besides THE Benjamin Lefebvre? Brilliant Maud scholar and essayist, inexhaustible editor and publisher of ‘the Blythes are Quoted’? Welllll, one of these edits, a written family tree of Anne and Gilbert’s grandchildren, mentioned Anne Blythe... and pointedly noted that she was either the daughter of Jem or Shirley.

Reading that? Already a huge jump-scare surprise to me. This immediately challenged what I thought I knew about the third generation of Blythes. I sat straight up in bed, brain doing a nosedive, like wait wait wait wait wait… hold on, what? We don’t know for sure? We don’t know for sure? 

Guys. We don’t know for sure. 

Whichhhhh sent me on an immediate hunt to gather up what we do know for sure. The facts we do have. And it wasn’t a huge task, either… there’s really not a lot to collect.

But here it is:

In ‘the Blythes are Quoted’, Anne Blythe is mentioned in only one story, titled “The Road to Yesterday” (not to be confused with the TBAQ abridged predecessor book of the same title 😅).

All we really have of her is her name, and a couple of superficial second-hand anecdotes from a guy named Jerry (who is impersonating a fellow named Dick, but more on this a little later).

Her paternity is unconfirmed, but because her surname is Blythe (not Ford or Meredith), we can logically eliminate the possibility of her belonging to Nan, Di, or Rilla. Walter was, of course, lost in France. This leaves Jem and Shirley. 

Tiny details about Anne.

As a matter of housekeeping, let me try to get the jump on any potential counter-arguments, and clear the air.

The only reason I’ve seen Jem credited with Anne is because…

1. Jem was married.

That’s the entire basis.

And I’ll grant you that. This is more than we got for Shirley. But let’s remember that at the end of ‘Rilla of Ingleside’, we only had a canon engagement between Jem and Faith... it takes getting around to ‘the Blythes are Quoted’ to absolutely conclude that their marriage went through. With the added extra bonus of finding out that they have children.

But even allowing that, ‘the Blythes are Quoted’ as an epilogue isn’t all inclusive. It isn’t a complete picture. It’s half a picture at the very best. Maud, pressured greatly, basically dumped all her disorganised, non-chronological and unedited Anne relevant WIPS + short stories + poems on her publisher's desk two days before she died. This is not a book that Maud put together, as a tailpiece collection. It was an assortment of partial works and in-character conversations that she’d tinkered with over decades. Works she never intended to see being published. They were vague ideas she was forming, little seeds. (It took a lot of effort from Benjamin Lefebvre to put TBAQ together in a readable way that made sense.)

Maud was over Anne. Over Anne by twenty years, at this point. So much so that noticeable character details and world building started slipping in Ingleside and Rilla… for obvious instance, in the lack of continuity around Shirley’s birth year, and the way readers saw almost no closure/representation for Shirley and Di, with varying degrees of near erasure in the original books. 

But this doesn’t mean that Maud didn’t have plans for these two characters... their incomplete or unsatisfying stories certainly weren’t nefariously intended to be that way (there’s no secret meaning to the exclusion); Montgomery was just depleted and had been feeling ruinously dispassionate about the Blythes stories since ‘Anne of the Island’.  

In ‘Reading Rilla’ we see in Maud’s many pages of left-out notes, that an ultimately scrapped journal entry from Rilla indicates that Diana Blythe wrote to their mother of her engagement to a foreign overseas officer. It’s unclear if this officer is the same ‘Austin boy’ that an older Glen woman in ‘the Blythes are Quoted’ privately wonders about (if Di 'really is engaged to him or not'), but this contradictory bit is probably just erroneous gossip from an unreliable narrator.  

Anyway. All of this to say... that just because we don’t have a canon marriage for Shirley, it doesn’t disqualify him from having had a wife and kids in Maud’s post-war Four Winds. TBAQ stories were, to reiterate, half-pictures. Pictures that did/could drop a plot bomb in a single sentence. Looping back to Di, canonly we don’t have a marriage for her either... and yet, we do have two engagements that half-register. One engagement was definitive, reported by Di herself. The other a passing curiosity from someone not close enough to the Blythe family to know.

So... clearly, Maud had active intention, a plan, for Di and her own little happy epilogue. The same can be believed for Shirley. (I’m dying for the day the ‘Rainbow Valley’ and ‘Ingleside’ manuscripts get published, I’m convinced there’s more Shirley be found in the notes.)   Now, let’s dig in to Anne Blythe herself.  

‘The Road to Yesterday’ is a short story about a woman named Susette (a spinster at 28), who is on the brink of an engagement to a wealthy man named Harvey Brooks. She expects the next day to be proposed to. On a whim and feeling nostalgic, she drives to Glen St. Mary, where she lived in her girlhood, for the evening. While there, she runs into a fellow, whom she believes to be Dick, her childhood bully who she hated profoundly. Except now, they’re grown and capable acting chummy over their shared memories. The weather takes a bad turn, and they take shelter and a meal together. Susette spends most of the time, all their ‘do you remembers’, being irritated by Dick’s constant name-dropping of the Blythes. He claims to have been kind of secret friends with Anne Blythe, which is contrary to Susette’s memory that Anne hated Dick. (In the end, it turns out that Susette was right… this isn’t Dick she’s talking to. It’s Jerry Thornton, Dick’s cousin.)

For the official record every Blythe mentioned in ‘the Road to Yesterday’ is as follows: Doctor Blythe, Mrs. Doctor Blythe, Rilla Ford, Jem Blythe [Jr.], Di Meredith [Jerry and Nan’s], and Anne Blythe.

It’s mostly a bunch of school yard talk, but the big takeaway for this purpose is that the Blythe/Meredith cousins all hung out together as school children.

Here’s some direct examples:

*****

*****

*****

The cheap boiled-down version of this exchange, for those who haven’t ‘the Road to Yesterday’ is basically: Susette is having strange feelings during this interaction with ‘Dick’, she’s attracted to him, declaring to herself that she won’t fall in love with him, and is clearly irritated with the near constant Anne Blythe (especially)/Blythe references. Though she herself was very fond of Jem Blythe Jr. herself, during their childhood, ‘Dick’ mentioning Anne Blythe so fondly is increasingly Not Cute to Susette. Meanwhile, ‘Dick’ is enjoying this kind of teasing, and is lowkey successful at getting a rise out of Susette, not matter how determined she is to look unaffected.  

But here’s the kicker... when ‘Dick’ finally leaves off mentioning Anne Blythe, guess what topic he moves on to? 🥁

The Royal Canadian Air Force.

And just who do we all know that was in the Royal Canadian Air Force?  

Shirley.

Only Shirley.  

First, it tracks that ‘Dick,’ soon enlisting (we’re on the brink of WWII timeline-wise), and thinking himself funny, would choose to move on from Anne Blythe to instead a subtler rib… what he, as a once good pal of Anne’s, would know was Anne’s dad’s war faction. It’s also in the realm of possibilities that thinking on Anne so much drew up this correlation. I also ALSO think it’s worth mentioning that the only other time that the Canadian Air Force is mentioned in TBAQ is a very passing drop for Rilla, thinking of her son Gilbert Ford enlisting with the CAF. That’s it. Just those two times.

Additionally important to note is the overall subtext tone in TBAQ, which is Maud’s very greatest collection of double-vision, double-speak and intertextual reference works. There’s a beautiful scholarly essay on this, in relation to TBAQ particularly HERE.

This doesn’t only apply to cultural references in TBAQ. It also adds layers to Maud’s own existing Anne series. It really could be considered a companion piece, with X-Ray vision, e.g. how we got a ton of ‘missing’ insight into Anne and her children’s lives and minds, during the Rainbow Valley era, in Part 1 of TBAQ.

Part 2 of TBAQ (where we find ‘the Road to Yesterday’) asks us to apply what we already know to the new text we’re given.

So, understanding this … if we’re going off what we already know from ‘Rilla of Ingleside’…

What’s the reason we have the Canadian Air Force mentioned in the same story that we learn of the existence of Anne Blythe? The connection?

It’s Shirley. 🥹

A weaker argument that I’ll only mention in mild passing, because it is very weak in terms of convincing evidence, is that the text unambiguously tells is that Anne Blythe has taught ‘Dick’ from Susan’s famous recipes. Susan is another Shirley tie. It’s there to be stated. BUT. I do admit that I think Susan would’ve taught every willing Blythe grandchild with the same zeal, maybe some partiality given to the Little Brown Boy’s kid(s).

BUT, for me?

I’m properly convinced here.

Shirley was a dad, ya’ll.

#long and messy post #wrote this out in twenty minutes and i’m certain it’s utterly infested with grammatical errors and typos so i already beg your forgiveness #IF ANYONE would like to take up a counter-argument i am fully sat #shirley blythe #meta #lucy maud montgomery #the blythes are quoted

[timeagainreviews]

Dance, Magic Dance: The Church on Ruby Road

With the return of Russell T Davies we were given a “new” Doctor Who logo with their revamped take on the classic diamond logo. The diamond logo is everywhere now. Books, web content, episodes, and more are stamped with it. Everything except for the “Doctor Who: The Collection,” blu-rays which continue to display the Jodie Whittaker era logo. The reason for this is simple- spines. Most people display books and physical media with their spines facing outward. If you were to change the font on those spines, they lose their uniformity. For some people, that shit is infuriating. It’s not just Doctor Who fans either. The infamous plastic Homer head box for The Simpsons’ sixth season DVD is still controversial. If Doctor Who fans can get upset about a blu-ray spine, then imagine how they might react if you were to change the Saturday time slot to a Sunday. Or even more brazenly, imagine changing the Christmas episode to a New Year's Eve episode. Should be super easy, barely an inconvenience. Right?

It had been six years since Doctor Who last aired a Christmas special. While I have come to appreciate the importance of a Christmas episode within the fandom, I argued in favour of the change at the time as I am not the biggest fan of Christmas. I have history with the holiday, like many of us do. New Year’s Eve also pertains to time, so it made some sense. And for as cheerful as they tend to be, Doctor Who Christmas specials were becoming a graveyard of regenerating Doctors. I get that Christmas is about renewal, but watching the Doctor die on Christmas isn’t my jam, especially if they’re surrounded by a bunch of tacky Christmas decor. Only one other time do we see a freshly regenerated Doctor at the beginning of a Christmas episode and that was David Tennant in  “The Christmas Invasion.” It also consistently ranks as the best of the RTD Christmas specials. Though I believe “The Church on Ruby Road,” may soon challenge that.

Before I get into it, I want to preface this by saying I was on my third flute of Buck’s Fizz by the time the episode started. I don’t usually drink alcohol when I’m about to watch a film or TV show. I once went to see Terry Gilliam’s “The Brothers Grimm,” while drunk and it was a bad time on two fronts. But this was Christmas, I was feeling a bit jolly. I only mention this because I may be a bit fuzzy on the details. It’s funny then that the details are another reason I’m feeling a bit fuzzy. Last night, when I should have been asleep, I was researching runes, glyphs, and symbols in an attempt to identify the symbols drawn on the Doctor’s fingernails. That’s how intriguing this new era of Doctor Who is- it’s got me doing research into the early hours of the morning.

Where I first noticed the symbols drawn on Ncuti’s fingernails was in the below promotional image. They looked like some fan had put them there, but when I saw that it was official, I felt a stir inside. Part of me mourned for the kids who have parents like my mom who would see those symbols, call them Satanic and forbid them from watching Doctor Who. The other part of me questioned their function. I know Ncuti Gatwa is an avid follower of the zodiac, so I was braced for it to be that simple, but I had hoped it was something more. In my research, I had trouble finding an exact match for the two clearest runes in the picture. The character on his ring finger looks a bit like the number three in Psalter Pahlavi or like something from Linear A. While the crescent shape on his middle finger looked a bit like the alchemical symbol for platinum or the zodiac symbols for the Sun and Moon. When you’re a time and space travelling alien, your zodiac and table of elements must reach beyond our solar system. They could be alchemical symbols for Dalekanium or the zodiac symbol for Gallifrey. Maybe with this new magical Whoniverse, the Doctor now writes talismans on his fingers for protection.

It’s an enchanting prospect that we get to discover this new magic through the eyes of a new Doctor and companion. There’s a sort of levelling of the playing field for us as fans to come into this new chapter of Doctor Who slightly off our bearings. Who better to lead us through the chaos of magic than the Doctor himself? If his fingernails are a sign of this change, then he’s already got a leg-up on us, which is an exciting place to be as an audience. It’s so easy to be a pedantic know-it-all when the answer is always “Aliens,” but what about all those times a wizard did it, or in this case, the Toymaker?

Our introduction to Ruby Sunday was a bit surprising. Leaving her on a church doorstep felt like a page out of the Steven Moffat playbook of fairy tale magic. But also grounded in the character development we got with Rose, Martha, and Donna. Ruby’s backstory is a mystery, but her agency is not. Ruby has friends, a band, and a family. We’ve known her for 55 minutes and I already have a decent grasp on who she is as a person. She has a compassion for Lulubelle which goes beyond being kidnapped by Goblins. You can see she feels a kinship as a fellow foundling. She knows how it feels to feel disconnected from her history. Similarly, the Doctor can look at both Ruby and Lulubelle and see himself on their faces. He too was adopted after being left behind. 

I enjoyed this aspect of the story as my own family is touched by adoption. My mother found out she was adopted after her adoptive parents died. Coincidentally, she had already adopted a little girl from China a year or so prior. I now have three adopted siblings and I love them all. It means a lot to me to see them portraying Ruby’s family as a realistic depiction of an adopted family. Her adoptive mother, Carla, is as good a mother as one could hope for. When she admits she was nervous about Ruby finding her biological mother, it’s understandable. She doesn’t want to ruin the beautiful family that started when Ruby came into her and her mother Cherry’s lives.

The Davina McCall scene may be the weakest part of the episode. Aside from the prologue, it’s basically the first scene, and much like the other opening scenes in the RTD2 era, it’s a bit wonky. The dialogue lends itself to Ruby’s nervousness being interviewed, but “foundled,” is a bit too close to fondled for my tastes. It’s VOR all over again. The main takeaway from the interview is that Ruby was the baby left at the church (no surprises there) and that Davina’s people are going to try to find her birth parents. Sadly, as we come to find out, Ruby’s parents prove to be untraceable. The interview is cut short when the mics begin picking up the sound of Goblins. I feel like the only reason they were Goblins is because pointy-eared mischief makers called Gremlins ruining Christmas was a bit too close to a certain ‘80s movie. Better to go for a story with musical numbers about Goblins who steal babies for the Goblin King. No ‘80s movies infringed there… wait a minute. I kid of course, there’s nothing wrong with paying homage to the classics.

Before we get too far from the interview scene, I want to talk about Denzel. No, I don’t mean America’s sweetheart, Denzel Washington, I mean the sound guy. Was I drunk, or did Ruby mention he asked her out? I’d heard rumours she was going to have a bit of a love triangle with her boyfriend and the Doctor. I wonder if it’s not him. It would be weird to have a sound guy with a unique name who gets mentioned again if it’s not going to come back into play. I think this might enter the territory of the controversial aspects of the season that Millie Gibson alluded to recently. It’s funny then that the part of me that finds any of that controversial is the part of me that hates the idea of the Doctor being romantic with companions. I’ve never enjoyed it. Rose and Ten? Blech. Yaz and Thirteen? Snore. Representation matters, sure, but what about asexual and aromantic representation? I get that people might fancy the Doctor, especially when they look like Ncuti Gatwa, but I hope the Doctor continues to ward off any advances.

Speaking of representation, I would like to take a smidgen of a moment to talk about Trudy. As a trans woman, it was nice to see her living her best life. Simply letting trans characters exist is better representation than what we got in “The Star Beast.” They didn’t even pat themselves on the backs about it in “Doctor Who Unleashed,” as I worried they might. Regardless, some cis people think that any trans representation is shoving it down their throats. They reject the reality that for many people, trans people are a part of their daily lives. If your average person took the time to learn people’s pronouns, they’d see we’re everywhere. We’re not trying to shove anything in your face. Trust me. You’re not our type.

As I said above, it’s nice to see Ruby’s life play out over this montage. You learn a bit about her life and what she gets up to. Though when I heard she had a band, I was hoping for something more punk than Christmas standards. Ncuti dancing on the dancefloor was joyous, a word which I find myself using about him a lot lately. I love the embracing of his Scottish upbringing with his kilt. When I read RTD’s Doctor Who Magazine article talking about the Doctor dancing, I worried a little bit. Sure, the Ninth Doctor proved the Doctor dances, but I worried the scene would make the Doctor feel too sexy or too human. The Eleventh Doctor’s terrible dancing garnered the name “The Giraffe,” because it was so unflattering. But the Fifteenth Doctor pulls it off in a way few others could. However, I do still take issue with one aspect of that scene and that’s Ruby leaving her drink unattended in a busy club. There are worse people than Goblins mucking about with drinks, Russell. Let’s make a good example for the young members of the audience.

The montage of the Doctor watching Ruby from afar was actually a note from Disney. Test audiences wanted to see the Doctor earlier, and I don’t disagree. In the words of Werner Herzog’s Mandalorian character- “I want to see the baby.” It also explains why we recently saw footage of Ncuti punching through a snowman head when principal photography had ended months ago. This, of course, was due to further meddling from the Goblins, who appear to be everywhere now. They’re like bedbugs who pass from person to person. I loved the line “A pram at midnight. Really?” Such a cheeky Doctor already. Gatwa gives vibes of previous Doctors throughout the entire episode, but the snowman head scene gave us one I didn’t expect. The Doctor telling the policeman to ask his girlfriend to marry him reminded me of the Eighth Doctor’s penchant for fortunetelling. Only this time, he’s not weirdly omniscient, but rather making a wild assumption after his sonic pinged a diamond ring, which is a thing it does now, evidently.

The Doctor’s new sonic screwdriver has been a bit controversial, because what isn’t in this fucking fandom lately? I get the argument that it’s just not to your liking, that’s fair. But I’ve seen some monumentally dumb takes on the subject. I saw someone complain that it wasn’t shaped like a screwdriver. I hate to break it to you, but none of them have been shaped like a screwdriver. Show me on the Third Doctor’s where you fit the Phillips head. I’ve also seen people complain that it looked like tech from the early 2000s. So their biggest complaints are that it looks weird and out of time. How inappropriate for an alien time traveller. Regardless, I loved seeing Fifteen using his assorted gadgets. His intelligent gloves feel like a natural fit amongst his classic instruments and I can see them coming in handy further down the line. There’s also something about seeing the Doctor pull out the psychic paper that brings it home for me. It’s like seeing the Doctor square off with their first Dalek. It makes them feel complete. I know RTD said they’re giving the Daleks a rest for a bit, but I hope we do get to see Ncuti officially call one a “detty pig,” before he bows out.

The Goblin ship was a great way to introduce us to the new magical aspect of the Whoniverse. Not just because it’s fantastical, but also because the Doctor wasn’t able to use his shiny new screwdriver on it. Had it been a normal spaceship with metal and wires, he would only need to point and click. But this ship is all wood and rope, rendering the sonic mostly useless. The Goblins force the Doctor to learn the science of luck, but the ship causes him to learn the language of rope. I adored watching Ruby and the Doctor bicker while he was busy learning about the ship. They’ve not been together five minutes and they’re already getting tied up by baddies. They have an instant Doctor/companion relationship and it’s obvious why they were paired together. Furthermore, Ncuti’s detachment from the danger of the situation, coupled with an admiration for the Goblins’ tech was pure Doctory goodness. I could easily see Tom Baker fiddling with rope while Sarah Jane complained that he was goofing off.

Because of the charity release of “The Goblin Song,” many of us had become intimately familiar with it before the episode. What I doubt many of us were expecting was for Ncuti and Millie to join in on the singing. While I’ve not heard anyone complain about this, I’m sure someone has. To me, it worked. For starters, it’s a Christmas episode. Secondly, the Goblins have a band. It makes sense that the Doctor would try to win them over by speaking their language. It seems to work as the Goblins dance along with the Doctor and Ruby. Much of their logic seems dictated by whimsy. They sing and dance. They cause mischief. And they are attracted to coincidence. It’s not just that Lulubelle is a baby, it’s that she’s flavoured by happenstance. Both she and Ruby are foundlings left on Christmas Eve. It’s like the sound of a dinner bell for these little munchers. While the singing and dancing worked for both the scene and the Goblins, I hope RTD continues to use it sparingly. While I expect to see it return with the Beatles episode, I don’t want the concept to wear out its welcome. Doctor Who can afford the odd musical episode, but let’s not go crazy.

With Lulubelle saved, the Doctor and Ruby get her back home before Carla or Cherry ever notice she’s gone. This gives the family a chance to meet the Doctor, starting with Cherry. Cherry’s reaction to the Fifteenth Doctor was an understandably thirsty one. RTD kind of wrote himself into a corner by casting Gatwa. It must be exhausting to begin every scene with “The Doctor enters the room and people are immediately enamoured.”  He exudes charisma in a way that makes you stop looking at David Tennant. Remember the bi-generation scene? Little known fact, but Tennant was also in that scene. Another enjoyable aspect of the Cherry scene was seeing the Doctor flirt back. I know I said I dislike a romantic Doctor, but it was nice to see it with someone more age-appropriate. I kid, but what I did like about the scene was that he spoke to her as if she were a young woman. Because for him, she is. And even further, it didn’t feel like that cutesy old people flirting like “If I were younger,” bullshit. It makes sense that a time traveller would find whoever a person is in the present the most important. You can travel to the past or the future, but it all pivots along you in the present. We stand outside past and future versions of ourselves. To me, this is why the Doctor is compassionate, he sees the pivot people are capable of making. Can you now pivot beyond a dark past into a bright future?

The meeting between Carla and the Doctor was less flirtatious. Carla seemed open to this eccentric Doctor while keeping a concerned mother’s distance. The ironic thing is that not only is the Doctor like Ruby and Lulubelle, but he’s also a lot like Carla. Both of them know the weight that comes with what the Twelfth Doctor would call “duty of care.” Like the Doctor’s long list of previous companions, the photos on Carla’s fridge tell a story of lives touched. This is why when things go bad and Ruby disappears, the missing photos on the fridge cut us to our core. Michelle Greenidge floored me with her performance here. Seeing her claim her life is great because she has no responsibility was harrowing. We’ve seen her real truth. She’s a centre point of light illuminating the lives of many, not this selfish woman in it for the paycheck. Even Cherry now feels forgotten in the other room, waiting out the clock. This is a reality the Doctor cannot tolerate.

Not only are the Goblins little baby-stealing monsters, but they’re also time-hoppers, whatever the hell that means. How it differs from time travel probably has more to do with a Time Lord’s concept of elegance than anything else. But like the Daleks, I doubt Goblins have much of a concept of elegance. If anything it’s a warped admiration for coincidence. And if a baby Lulubelle isn’t a viable meal option, then the other side of that coincidental coin, baby Ruby, would have to suffice. After all, I’m fairly certain if they don’t feed the Goblin King soon, he’s going to start wooing Jennifer Connelly at a masked ball. The Doctor travels back to that church on Ruby Road. Tears still running down his face, we see the mysterious woman leaving Ruby behind. Is it her mother? Is it a younger version of the mysterious Mrs Flood? Is it Ruby herself? The Doctor doesn’t have the time to go chasing after her. He has Gobbos to stop.

Floating above the church steeple like Bowser’s airship, the Goblins begin hauling Ruby onboard. The Doctor climbs to the church roof where he puts the last spark of power in his intelligent gloves to the test. Instead of climbing up to the ship, the Doctor begins pulling the ship back down to earth by its rope ladder. However, the ladder is more likely to give out before his gloves do. So in a last-ditch effort, the Doctor brings all of his weight down using the gloves’ ability to increase mavity (I know) on the ladder. The ship plunges onto the church steeple which stabs up through the hull and into the belly of the Goblin King. With his influence and magic now dispersed, the ship and all of its Goblins disappear with it, leaving baby Ruby in a freefall. No pressure. The Doctor of course catches her using the gloves to cushion her fall. It was all a pretty lucky gamble considering the steeple could have just as easily hit Ruby, but luck is now a tangible thing, so maybe it was lucky. You could say “The Doctor killed a guy,” but you could also say this was the Goblin King’s second chance, and as you remember- “No second chances.” It would appear that the Doctor is still that sort of man.

With the Goblins gone, neither Ruby nor Davina McCall will be plagued with bad luck. Davina even gets so lucky as to have the Doctor appear just in time to prevent her from being brained by a Christmas tree star. The pictures on the fridge are back, and so is the giant crack the Goblins left when they attempted to kidnap Ruby. It makes you wonder just how Carla and Cherry will fair with squirrels getting in through the roof while Ruby is off exploring all of time and space. Does insurance cover acts of Goblin? Who knows, maybe Kate Stewart will stop by with a restoration team. All the Doctor would need to do is make a call. Mrs Flood returns to commend the Doctor for a better parking job. Is it just me or was that a subtle hint of disability representation? A subtle reminder not to block the pavement for the elderly and disabled.

I liked that the TARDIS appeared to invite Ruby inside by opening her doors to her. You could say the Doctor flipped a switch, but he was busy doing his fourth costume change. I like to think she was giving her seal of approval. I never quite understood why the TARDIS didn’t like Clara. It seemed to come out of nowhere. The TARDIS was like, “I dunno why, but I don’t like this bitch.” I guess you could say the whole Impossible Girl thing made her competition, but now it’s just starting to sound like Moffat writing women. But the TARDIS and Ruby? Just gals being pals. Sisters before misters. Empowered women empower women. Yas queen.

In the end, we’re left with Mrs Flood comforting her neighbour Abdul after he sees the TARDIS dematerialise. She gives the camera a devious smile as she says “Never seen a TARDIS before?” This of course is the classic Davies Easter Egg. He knew the fandom would blow up. And dammit, after almost twenty years of saying it, it had better be the Rani. Some people have said Romana or Susan, but she feels a bit more sinister. Besides, if it’s Susan, I’m going to be disappointed because Carol Anne Ford is still alive. If it was Susan, we’re owed a flashback to her regeneration. The reason she feels slightly sinister is the way she gaslights Abdul about the TARDIS. She yells at the poor man like he parked the thing in front of her house even though she apparently knows what it is. Conversely, she could be nobody we’ve seen before. Perhaps she’s an Eternal or “the Boss.” Either way, I’m intrigued.

Ncuti Gatwa is finally the Doctor. It almost feels unreal to be able to say that. Not only have we waited a long time to say it, but what an exciting Doctor he is already. He brings an invigorated energy to the performance. He's full of charm and I can't picture many Doctors pulling off a curtsy as well as he did. I’m still waiting for him to get a bit scary, but his amazed reaction to seeing Goblins about to eat a baby shows me he’s capable of it. I would like to see them show his age a little, but there’s still loads of time. His conversation with Cherry gave us a glimpse at the ancient being behind his eyes, but I would like to see more. While the Doctor may still have hang-ups about his past, it would appear his time with Donna was a time of emotional healing. The Doctor isn’t afraid of his emotions and it’s been a bit of a revelation just how much I like that. This Doctor wears his hearts on his sleeves and it’s surprisingly refreshing. It’s a far cry from “I'm still quite socially awkward,” and I couldn’t be any happier about that. We have a new Doctor. A new companion. New rules. Is anyone else excited for May?

#Doctor Who #Ncuti Gatwa #Fifteenth Doctor #Millie Gibson #Ruby Sunday #Carla Sunday #Cherry Sunday #Goblins #Goblin King #Christmas Episode #Christmas Special #Mrs Flood #Anita Dobson #Michelle Greenidge #Angela Wynter #14th doctor #Davina McCall #Trudy #Mary Malone #Denzel #Bobby Bradley #Russell T Davies #RTD #BBC #TARDIS #timeagainreviews

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Okay, so this one has been eating at me for years and I FEEL like the asshole even though everyone involved has never expressed that they think I was an asshole. I’m terrified about what the consensus will be, and either way I should probably talk to a therapist about this now that I’ve typed it out. This one is mildly sexual but I won't include like, details of that or anything.

So basically, years ago I (20 F) was dating this guy (19 ftm) with a LOT of issues. When we first started dating, I mentioned that a lot of his issues really echoed a lot of what my mom went through when I was growing up, and that he should probably see a psychiatrist/therapist. Sure enough, turns out he’s bipolar too! We found out because the psychiatrist prescribed medication for depression that has a notoriously bad effect on bipolar folks. He started cycling rapidly and it was a lot of strain on a new relationship.

Here’s where the assholery begins. Basically, I went to visit him and his family for the first time, and we were up late that night. He was having a bit of a rollercoaster of a night. He’d been crying over something personal, and then we were laughing over a movie, and then things started to get heated. I was really kind of uncomfortable because of the wild swing of the night, and while I was into it, I knew he had a history of lying to sexual partners about his comfort with sex.

I told him over and over again over the previous months that if he didn’t want it I didn’t want to either. No one likes having sex with a partner that isn’t into it. This night though, I stopped him several times to ask him if he was sure. And at one point he asked me why I kept stopping things, and I told him because he’d had a lot of emotions that night and I didn’t want to take advantage of that.

He told me multiple times that he was fine and he was good. Fast forward several months and we’re at a party playing some question game or whatever. Someone asked me about the best sex I’d ever had, and I mentioned that night because it WAS good. That’s when my partner turns to me and says he has NO MEMORY OF THAT NIGHT AT ALL. Like he’d been so out of his mind that he’d disassociated the whole night and doesn’t remember even being there, let alone sleeping with me. I mean, it sucks bad enough that he said this in front of all of our friends. He made a joke about “your best sex was during your partners mental breakdown lol.” We were ALL super uncomfortable for the rest of the night. Now, years later I still think about how horrific it is in hindsight.

Safe, SANE, and consensual right? On one hand, I know I’m not a mind reader and had no idea he was so out of it that night. But also, I knew he has lied to partners about his own comfort with sex before and I should have stopped him there. We’re no contact now, and I’m really glad to be out of that relationship for a whole host of reasons, but I still feel like there should have been some sort of sign or something I should have picked up on that would have stopped that from happening. I feel a little violated? Like not just physically but also like he really violated my trust that he would express himself maturely and make responsible sexual decisions.

He’s never said anything to me about being upset with the way things turned out. He’s never expressed hurt or that he thinks I was in the wrong. But there’s just something about this whole situation that makes me feel like I did something irreversibly terrible to someone else. So I guess I have to ask. AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Shoe digression: Horsegirl Hour

A couple people commented on my high heel origin story post that they thought everybody knew that high heels originated with horseback riding. And it’s true. I did know that. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Horse Girl, endlessly obsessed with the topic. I absolutely knew that.

What snarled me up was that I could not believe that it happened circa 1580. I simply could not fathom the idea that nobody in Europe or its immediate neighbours wore high heels on horses until the 1500s. That is more than a thousand years after the invention of the stirrup! Wearing sturdy, closed-toe shoes with at least an inch of heel is and always has been the universal rule for being around horses... isn’t it?

Tumblr, you know the answer from the way I phrased the question. No, it hasn’t. This is from a 1556 manual of horsemanship:

(That type of form-fitting shoe they’re wearing is called a “turnshoe”, which means they have the protective value of a bedroom slipper or a soft leather glove. Because I’m such a nice person, you can get a better look here in this carefully-chosen detail from a 1459 fresco of attendants walking in a mounted procession:)

Also, you know how riders in medieval art always look like the artists are just drunk and out to lunch with foot and leg position?

NO REALLY THAT’S A REAL TECHNIQUE THEY DID ON PURPOSE. Armored foot protectors (”sabatons”) were genuinely jointed to let them do that super droopy toe thing! Even pointing down!

This is the same kind of betrayal I experienced when learning that there are approximately dozens of types of distinct regional and/or utility styles of saddle still being used and manufactured, today, all over the world. And that actually, my entire frame of knowledge around horses had been carefully molded through a highly specific cultural lens and there was a ton I didn’t know squat about.

When I was young and I’d read big books from the library with titles like Horses: The Absolutely Complete Book of All Human Knowledge About Equitation and they would earnestly assure me that there were exactly two types of saddles in the world: English, and Western. Perhaps three; the Australians were gauche enough to use... some hybrid of the two? And did the different types of English saddle count? Wait, are we counting sidesaddles? But in conclusion, there were exactly three types of saddle in the world. Anything else left must be a rustic relic from premodern times.

Which is... just its own miniature class in ethnocentrism and the limits of the British colonial lens. Part of it is because people get raised inside an echo chamber never learn of the existence of alternatives; part of it is that they learn to privilege some information more than others, so what’s considered a “real saddle” worth teaching children about is skewed; and part of it is because for centuries, Europeans in general and the English in particular have been extremely evangelical in telling the entire world that their way of approaching horsemanship (and everything else) is the Best, Rightest, Most Correct Way of Doing Things.

I’d been preparing to go all primary source on this topic, which would have delayed this post’s public appearance considerably, but today I actually found someone else who’d done it all for me. Over at The Works of Chivalry, Giovanni Battista Tomassini says:

[I]n spite of the crucial role that the horse has played in the history of civilization, historians have so far rather neglected the study of these kind of works and, more generally, have paid little, or no systematic attention, to the equestrian practices, the study of which has been mainly confined to the scope of enthusiasts and equestrian professionals.

That’s been changing a lot in the last decade or two, and I applaud him deeply for making his findings accessible to an international lay audience, in English and Italian. I have a few posts I found most interesting:

Horseback riding in the Middle Ages – Jordanus Rufus of Calabria: A look at extant sources on medieval horsemanship and some of their, uh.... less admirable aspects

“A la brida” and “a la gineta.”: Different styles of riding from the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, at least as different as modern “English” and “Western” schools

Anglomania & Anglomania Part 2: How English styles of equitation became popular throughout continental Europe during the 18th century

“Maneggi and Jumps”: Gently debunks the idea that many of the classical “airs above the ground” performed by the Lipizanners of the Spanish Riding School originated for medieval combat, since the earliest texts we see them in say, “These are rad as hell, but this is a SEPARATE SCHOOL OF HORSEMANSHIP, do not teach your warhorse these.”

That last one is especially funny because Hollywood always thinks that the epitome of a Historical Horse being Fearsome is them rearing up on their hindlegs! This is not actually what horses look like when they’re scary, but horses are not good actors, so that’s the closest thing we can train them to do. (It’s called “making a pesade”). And a 1562 manual on equitation actually says this:

Young horses learn pesades easily, and once they have learned them they make them willingly, as they think that once they have done them they do not have to do anything else. For this reason if they are [given the cue] they think they should not do anything else than stop and make a pesade. So they stop very often to rear against the will of the rider, and in a place where it is not required, and they do it even higher than what it is appropriate

HOLLYWOOD: ACCIDENTALLY RIGHT AFTER ALL 😂

#it's shoetime baby #except when it's #horsegirl hour

[atopvisenyashill]

What about laenor live and daemon die scenario?

Gonna be honest this is best case scenario for Rhaenyra husband wise lmaoooo.

Laenor isn’t a particularly present husband, in the show or in the books, but I think having a husband who just doesn’t pay attention to you is better than having one that your opps actively hate. Like, listen I love Daemon and I would even go so far as to say that I am a hashtag daemon apologist in several scenes but also this man is just objectively bad for Rhaenyra. He is the Aemond of her side; he’s too violent, too impulsive, too angry, too ready to escalate a situation, got too much he feels he has to prove. The main thing Daemon has going for him is his history in war being an advantage, but Laenor also has that AND he has a handle on his temper, if not his grief.

But details on where specifically I think this affects the plot-

Aegon III & Viserys II are butterfly effected away. This doesn’t mean Rhaenyra won’t have more kids tho. Depending on which canon you’re following here, it’s not impossible that Rhaenyra might take another lover, out of loneliness, wanting to have more children, or just like, spite, and if Rhaenyra & Laenor properly reconcile in their marriage, they may even attempt to have their own again to try to throw off the rumors about the older boys.

The Vaemond thing just objectively goes better. This isn’t hard, because it basically couldn’t have gone worse. First of all, in the books Rhaenyra sends Daemon to kill him. She cannot send Laenor to do it because that’s kinslaying which means she’d have to like, do it herself, and Rhaenyra is fierce but she’s not a warrior like Visenya. As far as we know, she cannot actually swordfight. So even if she has some sort of breakdown in front of Laenor begging him to protect their sons’ claims, Vaemond is NOT getting fed to Syrax publicly. Secondly, it’s a lot harder to continuously push that the boys are bastards when the father is standing right there going “well i’m saying they’re mine” like Vaemond would look INSANE especialy since LAENOR is Corlys’ heir so what is Vaemond pushing on here, exactly?? “Jump over Laenor in the succession to me??” Absolutely not! He’s going to approach this much differently!

The Dragon Twins are now Dragon Orphans. After the stepstones war, he doesn’t really do anything that could get him killed until the dance starts which means - who assassinates his ass? Does he die in tourney? Does Otto get worried about what Daemon would do once Otto takes the throne, and just decides to have him killed? And if he does - I mean fuck, a Faceless Man would be super expensive bc Daemon is famous as hell, but he’s also not a complete idiot and a regular assassin is probably not gonna whack him. If it’s obviously suspicious, Rhaenyra definitely panics over it, not to mention Baela and Rhaena are now orphaned and don’t have Rhaenyra as the mom who Stepped Up so Corlys has complete control over what happens to the dragon twins. He’s not gonna break the betrothals but at the same time, he does have a lil bit of leverage over Rhaenyra here. If Daemon dies in tourney, that’s hilarious, but probably doesn’t make Rhaenyra spiral over the Greens coming to murder her kids (she absolutely takes it hard emotionally though). If he gets sick suddenly and dies, I think Rhaenyra does get suspicious still but is fine. However, at the end of the day, Baela and Rhaena have no parents, nor do they have a stepmother.

There’s a lot of dragons to fight over now. So the thing is, in the book, Aemond claims Vhagar at Laenor’s funeral, not Laena’s. He’s not mentioned to have been at Laena’s funeral at all even though she died first. I’m not really sure what happens with the dragons once their riders die - you can’t really like, herd them back to KL if you can’t ride them. We know Vermithor and Silverwing just nested somewhere on Dragonstone and were left alone for awhile, for example, so I get the impression they just like. Let the dragon chill wherever the rider died and if someone claims it, someone claims it (which is how Laena got Vhagar in the first place). BUT. There’s two dragons riderless now, potentially just hanging out on Driftmark - Vhagar AND Caraxes. Maybe Aemond follows Vhagar’s call and manages to claim her before Rhaena does. Maybe Rhaena can’t actually claim her and Vhagar wanders somewhere safer for Aemond to attempt to claim her. Maybe Rhaena feels a call to Caraxes and claims him, so when Aemond claims Vhagar it’s not a big fight. There’s a lot of different ways this could go.

Addam won’t ever claim Seasmoke. That makes me sad. Aw maybe Addam claims Vhagar, we know she loves sad kids!!! I can dream!!!!

Driftmark goes differently. I say different and not goes away because the whole family is still going to gather to inter Daemon’s ashes at Dragonstone, and there could still be some high tensions but without being concrete about where he dies, we don’t really know where Vhagar or Caraxes are hanging out.

[WHEN does Daemon die in the show tho. Do he and Rhaenyra fuck and then he chokes on a pickle?? That’s gonna make her SPIRAL omg. Does he die with Laena in Pentos? Rhaenys is gonna have to fly to Pentos to go pick up the girls bc they have NO ONE now. How did Vhagar get back to Driftmark in the show, did Daemon just say “hey girl just follow Caraxes” and she was like “Yeah fine whatever I fucjing hate Pentos anyway”? How are they getting Caraxes AND Vhagar back to Dragonstone??? Anyways, Aemond would still get Vhagar in the show, probably, but Rhaena could claim Caraxes if she wanted]

Blood and Cheese is so much different. Aemond’s murder of Lucerys demands some sort of answer; there’s certainly the kinslaying & escalation of the war angle but also, he just like, murders someone bc his pride is hurt under a peace banner. This is the second dumbest move in the whole war (the first is B&C). Laenor (and Corlys & probs Rhaenys, bc he’s definitely checking in with his parents for what to do here) is probably yelling to everyone that Aemond is a kinslayer, but this post here gives a great alternative which is hostage taking. A son for a son - you murdered Lucerys so to keep you on better behavior, we are abducting your son. Certainly a cruel, brutal thing to do but like, I think a lot of people in Westeros would see this as a strong move so long as the Blacks treat whichever child they abducted (i’m assuming jaehaerys here) with all the courtesy and respect owed to a child hostage. If they posit themselves as people willing to play by the rules but not be pushed around, going up against the kinslaying tyrants who usurped them? Bro, that’s just a slam DUNK in PR, I think the Greens are cooked in terms of reputation here.

What’s the pattern you notice here? Well it’s that Rhaenyra’s reputation is a LOT better in this scenario and also, who has what dragon is kinda up in the air. Some people were always gonna side with the Greens for a variety of reasons but during the “war of words” where everyone is trying to shore up support, Rhaenyra may win more people to her side because her reputation has not taken several hits, and she’s made the Greens look bad.

However, while Rhaenyra certainly looks better and may gain allies faster, I still think there are some problems here - Otto is actively planning a coup & Rhaenyra is not in the capital. IF, after Harwin & Lyonel dies, Viserys still names Otto as his Hand, Rhaenyra is still roughly in a similar spot as in canon. I was going to suggest Laenor be named Hand (with Rhaenyra doing the work in the background) but I think that’s just as much of a long shot as Rhaenyra being named Hand, because Viserys is wary of Corlys & Rhaenys having too much influence (even though…. would have been better if the Hightowers had less power than his HEIR, Viserys pls). Most of Laenor’s use comes once the conflict starts - a cooler head to deal with the fallout of Luke’s death, to support Rhaenyra in the capital, to assert the claims of the Velaryon boys. At the same time, if Aegon still fires Otto after the Cargyll debacle & B&C (Laenor’s Version), and Criston still designs a trap, it’s possible that instead of Rhaenys dying in it, Laenor dies in it. But also maybe not!! Maybe Laenor, who has experience in battle, manages to wriggle his way out of the fight, or manages to take Sunfyre completely out, or even kill Aegon or Aemond. Aegon losing Sunfyre so early would imo be a huge blow to morale and if Aegon DIES this early? Even if all he does is exactly what Rhaenys and Meleys manage, that still means Rhaenyra has Rhaenys and Meleys still alive - maybe this means Rhaenyra is able to hold the capital for longer, maybe it means Rhaenys stays at Dragonstone and notices Aegon & Sunfyre and goes after them instead of Baela and Moondancer.

#canon divergent au #the dance of the dragons #laenor velaryon #asks #anons #this is actually one of my favorite aus to kinda speculate over. #laenor living! it’s interesting!

[aroacegundamalex]

hi hiiii i've been wanting to get into the mecha genre and the like, but im not exactly sure what to start with/where to start? I know theres not technically rules, but would you have any reccomendations for media to begin with? no worries if not, and thank you !! ^.^

I’m honored you’d go to me!

In terms of what to start with, it depends heavily on your personal tastes, so I’ll be including a range of series. Most of these are real robot, because super robot series can be very jarring for people who’ve never seen mecha before. I personally love super robot stuff, but it can be strange if you aren’t expecting a mech to pull out a giant top to hit pretentious bull-horned space princes with.

This is going under a cut for length!

If you’re looking for tragedy and horror, I have to suggest Space Runaway Ideon. While Tomino is most famous for his work on the Gundam franchise, Ideon is absolutely phenomenal. It often borders on Lovecraftian horror, and is famous for gruesome deaths and unrelenting tragedy. The gist of it is that a group of space colonists find a starship and a combining robot, and wind up in conflict with an alien civilization. As the war stretches on and the tragedies mount, it becomes clear that their wonder weapon, the Ideon, has a mind of its own.

Speaking of Gundam, the main timeline isn’t too unapproachable, and the standalone universes are all excellent starting points. I’m going to be giving a few of these, since Gundam series are ridiculously easy to access for English speakers— no having to dig through fan translations to find whatever has the least agonizing subtitle font here. Looking at you, Brave series.

The newest Gundam, the Witch from Mercury, is a wonderful starting point if you’ve not seen it already! It’s only twenty-five episodes, and while it pulls heavily from franchise history, it can be enjoyed without having seen a single prior Gundam.

It takes place in a future where humanity is split between Earth and space, with Earth being polluted and exploited by warmongering corporations, and space effectively being ruled by said megacorporations who are given the impunity to execute people. The first season primarily takes place in a school for the wealthy, which is effectively a training ground for future corporate executives, and a means to advertise their tech via mech duels. Everything in the school is dependent on one’s class, with even the dorms dependent on who sponsors your attendance.

The plot kicks off when our main character accidentally wins the hand of the daughter of the president of the largest conglomerate, as a political drama unfolds in the background.

It’s all on YouTube, and there’s a short story you should read between the prologue and the first episode, Cradle Planet. It’s on their official website, both in English and Japanese.

The original Mobile Suit Gundam holds up excellently, though the animation is rather clunky and dated. It’s a war story heavily pulling from WWII, following a child soldier who’s effectively forcibly conscripted when his home is attacked, and he hops in the main mech to defend civilians. It focuses on the horrors of war, and particularly soldiers’ PTSD. I’d personally suggest watching the three compilation movies and then circling back to the series proper if you liked what you saw— the compilation films cut out a lot of the fluff and make it a much more streamlined experience, but they also leave out a lot of lovely episodes and character moments.

Gundam the Origin, both the manga and the anime, are also wonderful beginners’ series. The manga is a retelling of the original series made by one of its creators, and expands upon it, giving neglected characters and storylines a lot more attention. The anime is an adaptation of a flashback arc, detailing the events leading up to the war in the original series, albeit with some timeline differences. It’s in my opinion the best place to start with Universal Century— while there are continuity differences, it’s a great primer for what Universal Centiry is at its core, a character-driven political drama and war story.

Obligatory recommendation for my favorite Gundam show, Gundam 0080. It’s a small-scale look at the tail end of a war from the perspective of a civilian child caught up in the mess when his home is used as a development center for the military. It’s a short little OVA, only six episodes, and doesn’t require much prior context for the rest of the franchise at all. It’s a very personal story focusing on a small cast of characters — a civilian child, a rookie soldier, and a test pilot — and their experiences with the war.

It’s best enjoyed with a burger.

If you’re looking for gritty military sci-fi, Armored Trooper VOTOMs is an excellent place to start. In this series, the mechs are walking coffins, with the outright referred to as “bottoms” because they’re considered the lowest of the low. It takes place during an uneasy truce between two warring nations, focusing on a man betrayed by his own side, hunted by both his former faction (and quite a few others) as he tries to discover the truth as to the mission that led to him being branded a traitor.

It is on the harder end of the sci-fi spectrum, so if you’re here for the ridiculous robots, it might not be to your liking.

If you’re curious about fantasy and shoujo-flavored mecha, Vision of Escaflowne is a phenomenal series. It’s an isekai, following a girl accidentally transported to another world by a brash prince on the eve of the destruction of his kingdom. From there on out it’s a mix of romance and political drama, with our heroes trying to thwart the machinations of an evil empire.

The mechs here are designed after knights, with utterly gorgeous designs and some really interesting setup mechanically-speaking— they’re magitek, and rather low-tech at that, with pilots seeing out of holes in the mech. Your enjoyment of the series will heavily depend on your fondness for shoujo romance and fantasy tropes, and especially love triangles. The movie adaptation has some fascinating piloting systems that skew close to body horror. While this one has manga, they’re generally not worth checking out.

If you’re looking for a mix of light-hearted fun and more serious action, the Patlabor show and OVA are essentially buddy-cop series taking place in a futuristic Tokyo, focusing on a department created to deal with mecha-related crimes. Both the OVA and series proper are a solid blend of fun, light-hearted character moments and tenser action. Our protagonist loves her mech like he’s a person, and it’s adorable. However, this one heavily depends on whether you like screwball police comedies.

The Patlabor movies, on the other hand, are densely political, examining the place of such technology in the world, and raises questions about the ethics of law enforcement and its use of violence to combat crime and terrorism, and the implications of using advanced military weaponry. They’re directed by Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame. These ones are pretty standalone, but if you’d like prior context, they take place in the same timeline as the OVA.

If you’re interested in mecha video games, I’m having a blast with Zone of the Enders: 2nd Runner! It’s got wonderful gameplay, and some really interesting mech designs. They’re themed after ancient Egyptian mythology, and the shape language of most of the mechs is very curvy and round, something you don’t really see often, giving it a very unique aesthetic. I haven’t finished it yet, however, so this is based only off the first chunk of story.

After a terrorist attack drags him into a conflict he thought he’d abandoned long ago, our protagonist is shot and left for dead. In a desperate attempt to save him, his body is connected to his mech as a form of life support— if he leaves it, or the mech shuts down, he dies. Seeing as the mech is what his enemies want, this leaves him no choice but to stay involved. The gameplay is quite energetic, the boss battles are fun, and just about every move and animation are designed to make you feel as cool as possible. It is a Hideo Kojima game, so keep that in mind going in.

While it’s a classic and often recommended, don’t watch Evangelion as your first mecha. It pulls very heavily from Tomino’s body of work, and I’d only suggest watching it after you’ve seen a show or two of his— especially Gundam or Ideon. Hell, watch an Ultraman or two first— that’s where the Christian imagery comes from. You’ll miss out on a lot if you go into it without prior context.

There’s a lot of mecha out there, but these are what I consider to be the most beginner-friendly. When it comes to banner franchises like Getter, Mazinger, or Brave— you can honestly pick any one of the shows to start with, as there’s no overarching continuity. Do some reading and pick whatever interests you! If you’ve got an hour or two to burn, there’s a retrospective on Getter Robo and its influence on the genre that’s worth watching even if you don’t plan to check out any Getter yourself.

I hope you find something you enjoy!

#alex.txt #based on your blog you seem to like darker stuff so that’s what I focused on with the recommendations #but I included a few lighter ones just in case #also! if anyone wants to suggest series in the replies please do

[crazy-fangirl2524]

More happy than not

Aaron should be happy. He got everything he wants. Well not in the ways he wants or expects, but still he should be more than content. He has his loving cousin, a team he is begrudgingly tolerating, decent grades, his relationship with his brother is somehow mending because of some meddling ginger, and he got a boyfriend.

A sweet, caring, hot, smart boyfriend. Never in a million years will Aaron ever expect himself to date Kevin Day but here he is, in Kevin’s arms, lounging on the couch, Kevin reading some history books he like and Aaron napping until he woke up.

“Hey, I got to go practice, see you later,” giving Aaron a light peck, Kevin leaves, following Andrew and Neil to their car.

The thing is, Aaron only has Kevin because Andrew has Neil. Aaron knows that he is never the first choice, no, he isn’t even an option. Even before Kevin asked him out Aaron knows deep down, but Aaron is a masochist so he accepts because it is better to be the replacement and have a part of Kevin’s heart than none at all.

Every time Kevin leaves to practice with Andrew and Neil Aaron’s heart breaks a little more. But every kiss from Kevin brings those pieces back together, but it will never be whole because how can Aaron’s heart be whole when he knows that when Kevin is kissing Aaron all he is thinking about is Andrew. That Kevin wishes it is Andrew he is touching instead of Aaron. Aaron has accepted these facts since he agreed to be Kevin’s boyfriend. Yet it still hurts. Especially seeing the way Kevin’s eyes lit up when he sees Andrew actually putting in effort, and how Kevin turns away whenever Andrew kisses Neil. Of course Aaron has noticed all these details.

All these Aaron tries to convince himself maybe it is all his assumptions and paranoia. But a few months into their relationship, Kevin confesses when they are discussing past relationships.

“Yeah, my first kiss is actually Jean, not Thea. But then we were too afraid to do anything about it.”

“Do you regret it?”

“A little,” Kevin says honestly. One thing Aaron loves about Kevin is his ruthless honesty that people think is rude or heartless. But Aaron loves how he doesn’t hide anything. Doesn’t mean that his sharp, true words didn’t make his heart bleed.

“But I will always love Jean, as a friend. I’m just super happy for him and Jeremy, I’m glad he has him. I just hate how I left him and couldn’t be there for him.” Aaron squeezes Kevin tighter, and Kevin presses a kiss into Aaron’s hair and Aaron cannot help but melt.

“Just Thea then?” Aaron asks.

“Well, I think I did have a crush on Andrew.” Kevin says guiltily. Aaron tightens his arms around Kevin. “He is just there, promising to protect me from Riko. And, I was so lost, doesn’t help that he is also attractive.” Kevin winks at Aaron. Aaron feels like he cannot breath.

“Is it just Kaitlyn for you?” Kevin asks.

“Yeah,” and Aaron doesn’t elaborate because they all know the story.

It’s been several months since that conversation but there isn’t a single day that Aaron hasn’t thought about it. He trusts Kevin that he will never do anything to betray Aaron. And of course Andrew will never ever cheat on Neil. Anyone that knows them know that.

So, Aaron just lives with the fact that he is not the person his boyfriend wants but just the stand in, the next best thing Kevin can have because Aaron is just right there and conveniently looks like Andrew.

Every kiss from Kevin kills and melts him. Every hug from Kevin leaves him breathless. Every time they fuck Aaron feels like crying because of how good it is and-

Aaron Minyard should be grateful for all that he has now because he never thought he will mount to anything. So this is already more than he deserves.

#i wanted to write more and when this issues come out and between them but idk how so I’ll just leave this here #i don’t rlly shop kevaaron but this angst potential makes me like it sm #i just love angst lmao if y’all cant tell from my hcs #but yeah god this potential #obv this is very biased and is from Aaron pov sooooo #but Hmnn yeah kinda proud of this #kevaaron #Kevin day #aaron minyard #Andrew minyard #Neil josten #andreil #aftg #all for the game #tfc #the foxhole court #aftg hc #aftg fandom #aftg fic #aftg fanfiction #aftg headcanon #aftg series #tfc fanfiction #tfc hc #tfc headcanon #aftg kevin #aftg aaron #tfc fic #tfc fanfic #aftg fanfic

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 037

Vegeta vs. (yawn) Cabba.

So this is the one where Vegeta teaches Cabba to turn Super Saiyan.  There are some good points to this episode, but for my money, it fails to overcome its most critical flaw.  This is supposed to be a tournament match, but it ends up becoming a training session.  Vegeta even points this out himself when Cabba asks for the lesson.  He goes ahead and teaches him anyway, though, which I can understand, because he already knows he can’t get a decent fight out of Cabba, so he may as well use the time constructively. 

But as the viewer, I feel ripped off.  The thing is, this scenario could totally work if it were part of a card full of banger matches.  But let’s look at what we’ve seen so far.

Match 1: Goku vs. Botamo.  Goku wins when he drags Botamo to the edge and judo-throws him out of the ring.

Match 2: Goku vs. Frost. A complete mismatch.  Frost cheats to win, the decision is later reversed.

Match 3: Piccolo vs. Frost. A complete mismatch.  Frost cheats to win, the decision is later reversed.

Match 4: Piccolo vs. Frost.  A rematch after Vegeta requests Frost be reinstated.  Vegeta demands that Piccolo forfeit so he can fight Frost himself.  Piccolo agrees.

Match 5: Vegeta vs. Frost.  A complete mismatch.  Vegeta knocks Frost out of the ring with one blow.

Match 6: Vegeta vs. Auta Magetta.  A shitshow.  Vegeta float around for ten minutes dodging lava until he finally remembers he can just solve all his problems with ki blasts.  Also, insults wear down Magetta’s resolve so this was actually another mismatch. 

Match 7: Vegeta vs. Cabba.   Another complete mismatch. 

Tell me, dear reader, which of these is your favorite?  Probably Vegeta vs. Magetta, just because it wasn’t a one-sided rout.  And yeah, it’s the best fight of this saga so far, but it still isn’t very good.  It’s what Jim Ross would call “bowling shoe ugly.”  But at least Magetta made his opponent work for it, which is more than I can say for his teammates or Piccolo. 

Now, there’s still three more matches to go after this, and we do see an uptick in quality, but there’s also another mismatch in the bunch.  To put it simply: the Destroyer Invitational Tournament is a one-match show.  That sucks ass, because it’s a tournament!   There are supposed to be lots of good matches!  Maybe all of them should be good!  I mean, why is that not something to aspire to?

All right, so let’s talk about the good aspects of this episode.  The main thing Cabba brings to the table is Saiyan lore, and I’m always down for that.  This arc did help me iron out some details about the Saiyan history I wrote into Luffa.  For example, even though the U6 Saiyans are very different from the U7 Saiyans, and they seem to have very divergent histories, Cabba still uses the same fighting stance Vegeta used when he first fought Goku on Earth.  And Cabba uses the Gallick Gun, which indicates that these aren’t just things Vegeta invented himself, or even something he picked up from his royal family.  No, if Cabba has the same knowledge, then that means Vegeta’s style is based on something far, far more ancient.  And this scene led me to conclude that Luffa should know the Gallick Gun and Vegeta’s DBZ Episode 30 stance as well.  If they date back to ancient Sadala, then that knowledge would be commonplace among Saiyans, even a thousand years ago. 

Recently, I was thinking about the history of the Universe 6 Saiyans, and it occurred to me that it kind of makes sense that Cabba has never heard of the Super Saiyan form.  According to the Battle of Gods movie, the Super Saiyan God ritual was used to empower one righteous Saiyan so he could wipe out the wicked Saiyans of his era.  He failed when the form wore off.  Later, Akira Toriyama declared that this ancient Saiyan hero was named Yamoshi, and he was the first Super Saiyan, as well as the pioneer of the Super Saiyan God form.  The Super Saiyans who followed Yamoshi would arise every thousand years, and supposedly their transformation was awakened by his vengeful spirit.  I think that’s how it was supposed to go. 

So what does that have to do with Cabba?  Well, in his universe, the Saiyans are all good guys.  They don’t have tails anymore, and they don’t terrorize planets.  Instead, they hire themselves out to defend weaker planets from powerful aggressors (something else I cribbed for Luffa.)  Cabba even said that the Saiyans in Universe 6 still live on their original homeworld, Sadala. 

In that case, the conflict Yamoshi fought in Universe 7 must have turned out very differently in Universe 6.  Maybe Yamoshi’s counterpart won in that world.  He wiped out all the wicked Saiyans, and retired, never using the Super Saiyan God ritual again.   Or mabye Yamoshi’s counterpart never had to fight at all.  The Saiyans of his era were cool guys, so he never needed to become a Super Saiyan God in the first place.  Either way, there was no “vengeful spirit” to trigger the rise of Super Saiyans in Universe 6.  And without that, there was no Super Saiyan Legend.  Which means Cabba would never know about the Super Saiyan form until he saw Goku and Vegeta in this tournament. 

This kind of ties into something else this episode helped me work out for Luffa.  A big question about the Super Saiyan Legend is why none of the ancient Super Saiyans taught anyone else how to do it.  Goku taught Gohan, after all, and Trunks and Goten were so gifted that they learned it on their own.  So why was there only one Super Saiyan every thousand years?  Sure, some of them might not be inclined to share their secret, but some of them must have craved a worthy opponent.

This episode gives us an idea of the answer to that.  Cabba begs Vegeta to teach him the transformation, and Vegeta is disgusted that he would even ask such a thing from an opponent, during a fight.  So he turns Super Saiyan and whoops Cabba’s ass for a while.  Cabba tries to surrender, but Vegeta refuses to let him.  He threatens to kill Cabba, rules or no rules.  Also, he threatens to destroy Planet Sadala, and kill Cabba’s entire family. 

And that does the trick.  Cabba goes wild and seems to turn the tables on Vegeta for a bit...

But it soon becomes clear that Vegeta was just letting Cabba run loose for a while to get him acclimated to the form.  Then he tells Cabba to transform again, and he seems to have the form under control. 

The point of all of this is that it’s not exactly an easy thing to teach.  Vegeta had to resort to physical attacks and threats against Cabba’s loved ones to push him over the edge.  A Super Saiyan altruistic enough to share their knowledge with others might not be so eager to engage in that kind of cruelty.  In DBZ, Goku got Gohan to Super Saiyan, but he had to shoot at him with a Kamehameha to do it, and Goku was kind of reluctant to push it that far. 

Also, imagine using this teaching approach on a Saiyan like Turles, who doesn’t care about anyone but himself.  What loved ones can you threaten?  Which world can you destroy?  It wouldn’t awaken anything in him because he doesn’t care.  The irony is that the U6 Saiyans are a lot easier to train in this sort of thing, but they have no concept of the Super Saiyan to aim for.  Meanwhile, the U7 Saiyans had the legend but generally lacked the compassion to understand how to get to it.  And that’s why there was only one every thousand years. 

Of course, later on, Cabba will teach Caulifla how to turn into a Super Saiyan, and that’s where the whole “tingly back” thing got started.  But that’s the exception that proves the rule.   Cabba was willing to teach the form and Caulifla was eager to learn, but he still had a hard time explaining it to her, and he lacked Vegeta’s talent for inspiring righteous fury.  Caulifla understood how to get to the bottom of the matter, but she’s a rare talent.  Most Saiyans wouldn’t ask such perceptive questions. 

Anyway, back to the fight.  Vegeta turns Super Saiyan Blue to show Cabba where the road leads next.  Then he one-shots him and wins the match.

Cabba thanks Vegeta for his instruction, and tells him that he’s a lot like the Saiyan King on Planet Sadala. 

Goku is surprised that Vegeta would do all this for an opponent, and Piccolo suggests it’s because Vegeta wanted to spend some quality time with another Saiyan.  Goku points out that he’s a Saiyan, and Piccolo’s like, yeah, but he hates you, Goku. 

I mean, yeah, Goku’s Different, no doubt about that.  Vegeta can bond with Cabba in a way that he can’t with Goku.  But I think Piccolo’s got it wrong.  Vegeta has a similar desire to support Goku, I think.  I mean, they hang out a lot.  Goku doesn’t need much mentoring, and his Earthling traits probably irritate Vegeta, but who else has he got?   He’s the Prince of All Saiyans, and that includes the big orange goofballs like Goku.

So the next match is Vegeta vs. Hit, and as they prepare to face off, Vados informs Champa that she had to promise him the Hexahedron to get him to join the team.  Champa is upset to hear about this, because the Hexahedron is a vehicle of gods, capable of travel between universes.  But he had told Vados to get Hit on the team by any means necessary, so here we are. 

#dragon ball #dragon ball super #2023dbapocryphaliveblog #vegeta #cabba #hit #goku #piccolo

[presidenthades]

I am doing very minor revisions of Daemon’s Handbook (mostly formatting and continuity errors), and I wanted to do some behind-the-scenes commentary before too much time passes and I forget my original thoughts. Here’s Chapter 8!

(Note that these commentaries aren’t canon to the verse until/unless the author writes them into the series. I might change my mind on a few points later, but these are the thoughts I had while writing.)

Rhaenys thinks Corlys was ignoring her letters in the Stepstones, but he was also really busy making sure Aegon and Aemond, who are teenaged boys prone to doing stupid things, didn’t accidentally kill themselves trying to nose-dive some pirates.

Luce’s status as heir to Driftmark is nebulous at first. When Laenor was alive, a) Laenor was heir and b) Corlys thought Laenor and Rhaenyra might still have a son. Now that Laenor is dead, by Andal tradition, Luce would be heir as eldest daughter (after Jace who’s slated for the throne). But one could argue that House Velaryon is Valyrian so it doesn’t need to follow Andal tradition.

Some might argue it’s better for Driftmark to stay in the male line to ensure the Velaryon name continues (which is something show!Corlys is big on), or Luce could be named heir but she has to marry within House Velaryon so she and her heirs keep the name. In this fic, Corlys affirms Luce as his heir, and not even Vaemond can complain too much about it because “daughters before uncles” is the norm for everything but the Iron Throne.

I have a thought that whomever Luce marries, Corlys might require that her eldest son/heir takes the Velaryon name (maybe all the children, who knows). So, uh, probably best if her husband is a second son/not the heir to his own lands 👁️👄🔹

*insert joke about Jace and Luce being the breadwinners while Aegon and Aemond are trophy husbands*

The more I read about medieval/Tudor history, the more intrigued I am by ladies-in-waiting. GRRM doesn’t flesh them out super well in his universe, and the show doesn’t have an infinite budget to go into the royal women’s relationships with LIW, but that’s what fanfic is for. I’ll go into more detail about it in one of the sequel fics. Jace is going to have an interesting bunch of LIW.

Rhaena and Helaena are taking notes about Luce’s suitors, but the notes are for themselves. As Rhaena discusses in Chapter 10, she and Helaena have unusual requirements for their potential husbands, and Luce is helpfully attracting a very large pool of eligible (and not so eligible) men.

I mentioned in a past commentary that Alicent likes Jace because Jace is proper and a good influence on Aegon. Alicent *does not* like Luce, whom Alicent perceives as being the opposite of Jace. (Alicent is lucky Baela isn’t interested in her children. Also when Joff gets older…😅)

I drop hints that Aegon drinks a lot less in canon. Part of it is Jace’s good influence, and part of it is that being in the Stepstones made him realize it’s really dangerous being drunk. (See: Chapter 7’s story about his hair catching fire.) He does get drunk during the wedding feast, because it’s his wedding and he deserves a treat.

In the show, all of Borros’s daughters look like adults, but in the book, Floris is 11 when the Dance starts (and Ellyn might be around that age). It makes sense that Floris and Ellyn are so young, otherwise I’m wondering why Borros has four unbetrothed adult daughters when Aemond comes knocking.

In this fic, I decided Cassandra is 16 (same as Aemond and Jace), Maris is 14, and the other two still younger. As the eldest, Cassandra is throwing her hat in the “Aemond’s potential wife” ring, and she has reasons to think she has a good chance. Baratheons have Valyrian blood and their ancestors have intermarried with Targaryens before. She’s also the heir to Storm’s End if her father remains son-less. (Unfortunately for her, Aemond is interested in a different heiress 🤭)

Baela being a mystery knight and attracting Cregan’s attention is a role reversal of the ASOIAF Harrenhal tourney with Lyanna and Rhaegar. I was originally going to have Daeron also join the lists, but I realized that was redundant with Baela in the picture, and he’s too small to pass for an adult male. So Baela got her moment to shine!

Why does Baela challenge those three Northmen? What do they have in common besides being Northern houses? I guess we’ll have to see in the Joff-centric sequel 👀 (Or you could dig deep into the ASOIAF wiki and try to find the answer.)

I decided to give House Velaryon a Valyrian sword since they *are* a Valyrian house. Corlys says Aegon and Aemond helped get the sword from Racallio Ryndoon after hosting a beach party. Racallio has many wives and he sometimes sends them to other men who seem like, uh, good sperm donors. I’m imagining that he might have made a similar offer to Aegon or Aemond or both. 👀 (In this fic verse, the boys would turn it down but the whole scenario would be hilarious, I think.)

I regretted making Daemon an idiot about fashion because it meant I couldn’t go into *too* much detail about Jace’s wedding dress. (But I have other fics in the works where I *can* go into detail!) Notice that Jace has a penchant for gold clothing and jewelry…because Sunfyre. ☀️

Is the story about baby Jace and Aegon a metaphor for how he supports her claim to the throne? Yes. Yes it is.

Jace’s Princess Diana moment is a big part of her Good PR Masterplan. She’s gonna make the smallfolk love her if it’s the last thing she does.

The little exchange between Daemon, Rhaenys, and Viserys during the ceremony reflects how I imagine their childhood was like. Daemon’s always squirming during sept services, Rhaenys pinches and pokes him to make him behave, and Viserys is a tattletale.

The Faith is supposedly based on Catholicism, so I leaned hard into the kneeling during services so Daemon has another thing to complain about.

Not gonna lie, I kinda want to write a short fic where the Dance does happen in this universe, partially because Aegon thinks he has to be king to keep/protect Jace. 🥲 Don’t know how the logic works out, but it’s fanfic, we’re here for the vibes.

During the feast, Rhaena and Helaena are talking to Daemion Velaryon and Garmund Hightower about the Fake Husband Project. Helaena will probably end up marrying Daemion (paper marriage only), but I don’t think Rhaena/Garmund is going to happen. We’ll see.

I’m kinda sorry but not actually sorry for Aegon’s song. I am proud I managed to make the rhyming and rhythm work. 😇

#my writing #hotd #house of the dragon #hotd fanfic #meta #hotd fic #house of the dragon fanfic #daemon’s handbook

[disregardcanon]

Toh npmd au for my own personal amusement

First thing’s first: character assignments 

Amity as Steph 

Luz as Pete 

Willow and Gus as Ruth and Richie

Boscha as Max 

Hunter as Grace 

Odalia and Belos both as parts of Mayor Lauter

Setting details: it’s still in Gravesfield, CT which still has its same Puritan vs witches branding. The mascot is a pilgrim and that IS Gus in the suit. Who has more school spirit than Augustus Porter? (No one.) 

So a few changes I’m making to make the toh cast slot a bit easier into the framework 

Belos is a fundamentalist preacher who’s raising his “niece”. Yes he DID kill Caleb and Charlotte. No one knows tho. It was lords in black related. Does that make it better? eh

Hunter is trans masc and a TOTAL egg. Right now, he’s a very enthusiastic little warrior for purity culture. Yes, he’s trying to get the dance canceled, YES he’s bullied a lot for being a “nerdy prude”. Not gonna dead name him but. He wouldn’t realize he’s a guy until significantly after the events of this musical 

Luz has NOT been in amity’s class since the 1st grade. She only moved here a year ago

Amity is still the mayor’s daughter and she and Boscha used to date. Amity’s stopped actively bullying people after they broke up and she’s felt like, guilty about it, but she’s never seen how much more.. Physical? Boscha’s bullying got than hers did. Sure, Amity was a queen of psychological warfare, but she never beat people up in the parking lot. 

Luz moves to Gravesfield during her junior year of high school. Amity and Boscha on the cusp of breaking up, so things are changing in their social hierarchy. For one, Amity is backing away from bullying and the spotlight and for two Boscha is getting WORSE. She when Luz moves in and aligns herself with “half-a-woman Willow” and Steve Urkel.. She’s thrown to the bottom of the school hierarchy immediately. Looney Lulu is what comes to mind first. 

Enter Boscha: literal monster, best quarterback in the school’s history and the first girl (she works that angle as hard as she can), and QUEEN of the school. She’s amity’s ex and like… mainly over her. 

Okay, who are we kidding? She’s not over her. Not at all. Boscha decides to put all her “trying to make amity jealous and take me back” energy into seducing amity’s least favorite student: local nerdy prude, preacher’s “niece” wittebane. 

Hunter and amity do NOT get along. At all. They’re duking it out for the valedictorian spot, their respective guardians are pitting them against each other, and they both just find the other… insufferable. 

So trying to bag the “girl” who’s the forbidden fruit and maybe making amity mad enough to take her back with it too? It’s worth a try, at least. 

Amity, meanwhile, is failing theater. She’s getting very frustrated and flustered and asks luz to be her scene partner so maybe she doesn’t fall on her ass. Luz is nervous because this is Amity Blight, super cool girl who used to be very mean to willow and now isn’t really a bully but is just? Way cooler than they are? Amity’s able to talk her into it. 

The teacher heaps a LOT of praise onto them and their chemistry and promises them good grades in the future if they keep working with each other. This leads to amity calling luz and trying to set up the pasqualli’s date. 

Boscha, meanwhile, is cornering hunter near the gym where he’s protesting the concept of dancing. He gets freaked out when boscha starts getting very very flirty and he gets really flustered because? Girl? Girl flirt with me? Also a girl? Hahahaha NO I AM NOT GAY I AM NOT- and he’s having a little sexuality crisis. Willow, who’s done putting up with boscha’s shit right here in the school building, hurls a waterbottle across the room in between them. 

Hunter SPRINTS away because OH BOY I WAS EXPERIENCING SOMETHING STRANGE AND UNWELCOME NO THANK YOU NO THANK YOU- and then he finds out that newly buff and gaining more confidence willow is the one who saved him. And she’s just like oh yeah anytime. No one should corner other people like that. And his little heart is going bEEPBEEPBEEEP BEEEEEEEEEEPPP and the rest of his body is not calming down either, ya know? 

Unwanted sexual attractions experienced by local nerdy prude today: 2. Fantasies experienced in the bathtub: 2 very, very different ones in a single sequence. 

Luz gets the shit kicked out of her at pasqualli’s because she runs into boscha before she finds amity and she’s like no i’m not gonna cower AMITY BLIGHT INVITED ME HERE! And. that. DOES NOT GO WELL 

Willow is ready to go to war over this when they get to school the next morning because she WARNED luz that amity wasn’t to be trusted and look? Look what happened! And luz is like yeah you also said i should stand up for myself- and willow’s like husssshhh. 

They plan a prank in the bathroom that goes very poorly. Hunter writes gus a detention slip for being in the girls’ bathroom (he should have written himself one too!) and then they prank the shit out of Boscha. 

To the point she. You know. Dies. then they have to dismember her at hunter’s urging! Hooray!!!!

Cue peace and love at the high school :) until poor gus dies. I’m sorry dude! You’re the mascot you were cursed. Of course the quarterback was going after you first. 

Boscha goes after luz second because she’s the dweeb who thought that she could steal boscha’s girl. Luckily for luz and amity both, they were together at this point and they RUN as fast as they can. Luz demands they go find willow because she’s probably the next victim, and they find her mid-boscha kill. She lost an arm because boscha was trying to take the “half-a-” thing to its logical, puny extreme. They rush her off to the hospital. The police come to question them. 

And then pastor wittebane comes with hunter in tow. He pulls something with the police about the parks wanting him to perform a protestant equivalent of anointing of the sick on their ailing daughter. 

Pastor wittebane very clearly knows what happened. 

“I thought you were gonna keep the beans cool!” Amity demands. 

“I couldn’t,” hunter tells her. 

“Fucking useless, wittebane,” amity mutters. 

Pastor wittebane glares at all of them. “You are going to get in my car and come with me.” 

“That sounds bad,” luz says, “my mom told me to never be one on one with religious officials.” 

“Fine,” he says, “if you’d like to be the next victim, be my guest.” 

They all get in the car, except Willow, who’s bed-bound. (Luckily, since she’s already in the hospital, boscha thinks of her as less of a kill count priority.) 

Belos takes them out ot the middle of the woods and makes them dig up the black book. Then boscha kills him! We DO get boscha killing belos, so i think that’s a win. They flee the scene, run into some cops, then make it to the high school to complete the ritual. 

We’ve got amity, luz, and hunter on the floor of the gym summoning the evil teletubbies. The evil teletubbies REALLY want amity to kill luz. They get to have their cool as i think i am reprise <3 and then the bullet leaves the gun and boscha catches it. Because she is very, very excited to do luz in personally. She’s still debating whether or not she’s gonna end amity, but luz IS going to die. In front of amity. For absolutely certain. 

Boscha’s getting ready to take care of another nerdy prude when hunter bursts out like HELLO YES! I AM READY TO HAVE THE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE! And boscha’s just like… whut? And then he gets very flirty and goes along with the stuff that she was saying earlier, and he’s.. Legit into it. Sure, flirting with hunter was half to spite amity, but she’s still very turned on by the idea of corrupting the perfect angel church girl into having hot and heavy sex with her on the football field. And making amity watch? That’s a bonus. Maybe she’ll get a threesome out of it. 

Hunter sends boscha to hell with the power of his jesus freak virginity, luz and amity have sixteen different crises, and willow lives to hear the whole crazy tale. Luz and willow mourn gus, hunter goes through the weird process of mourning his uncle while also realizing he’s glad that the guy’s gone and gets to know the shoulder ANGEL part of the shoulder angel and shoulder devil fantasy he was experiencing, and amity hides the book away in her own personal safe to try to keep it away from bad actors. 

It doesn’t keep it safe from mayor odalia blight, but… that’s not going to be that big of a deal.. Right? RIGHT?!?!?!

#toh aus #lumity #huntlow #npmd

[giogio1998]

How I imagine the JLI looks like in real life, a post nobody asked for:

Lately I’ve been going through the worst art block and I wanna draw something JLI related but it’s not going to happen bc my life is a nightmare so I decided to use words to describe physical aspects I think the JLI would have irl.

Disclaimer: I’m sick, I took cold medicine and I should go to sleep but I’m here instead writing this soon to be terrible post so pls enjoy.

Height: (nem sei se é assim que se escreve essa porra mas tô com preguiça de pesquisar)

I won’t be saying how tall I think everyone is mainly cause idk basic math but I believe that: Guy is the tallest of the group, idk ginger people give the vibe that they’re tall, I’m Brazilian so I haven’t seen many gingers in my life so I could be wrong, after Guy comes Booster, bc he’s blonde it’s the second whitest thing a white person could be besides ginger and white people are tall, it’s science (it absolutely isn’t science) then after that comes Ted I don’t think he is a short king but I don’t think he’s super tall either. Then comes the girls and I 100% believe that Tora is taller than Bea bc she’s Norwegian and like I said earlier white people are tall, also Brazilian women are short, I would know, in fact this week I saw on Twitter that the average Brazilian woman is 1,61cm and I’m 1,63cm which I know u don’t care but I wanna put on the internet that I’m above average.

Body … shape ? Idk:

I just think the guys aren’t that muscular, I imagine them with like swimmer body type u know ? Idk how to explain it but I personally don’t like when super heroes are drawn super muscular it doesn’t look natural idk. And for the girls I always imagine them to be like Bea has big butt small boobs and tora has big boobs and small butt bc every best friend duo is like that irl, if you never noticed it now you’ll see it everywhere.

Hair and stuff:

Bea has long wavy light green hair with a side part (idc that it isn’t cool anymore it is easier to draw ok, leave me alone). Tora has shoulder length straight white hair and I mean white not platinum, she has ice powers, she isn’t Paris Hilton. For the guys nobody cares so … yeah :)

Eye color:

That meme that every DC character has blue eyes is so real, to me tho I think Bea and Guy don’t, Bea has green eyes and Guy has brown eyes.

Nationality:

“Giovana that’s not a physical thing” SHUT UP, this is my post. I just wanted to mention that bc isn’t it weird that the justice league > INTERNATIONAL < is formed by 3 American dudes, 1 Brazilian and 1 Norwegian? That bothers me so much idk why so to give me some peace of mind I diced that Guy is Australian, Ted is Canadian and Booster can still be American, I feel better already.

Skin tone and things on skin … idk guys it’s late and I’m groggy:

I think Guy has a lot of freckles idk if u notices but I add them to his face in all my drawings. Tora has a reddish nose bc you know when it’s cold and your nose gets a little red ? I think that’s a cute detail. In my head Ted has dimples and only my opinion matters. Bea has black eyebrows and lips that’s bc of a fanfic I created in my head, and to me she’s a white Latina I know some people feel uncomfortable that she’s white and I know that bc some gringos commented on my posts asking “why is she light skinned” and I could have an entire conversation on why this sort of question is very stupid but for this post I’ll just say that Brazil had a lot of European immigrants throughout its entire history and as a result of that a lot of Brazilians are white, including me and it’s not a big deal. And for booster there’s nothing to add he’s just booster :D

I wanted to write more stuff but the cold medicine is starting to kick in so I’m gonna head out o/

#fire #dc comics #beatriz da costa #dc #justice league international #jli #ted kord #blue beetle #booster gold #tora olafsdotter #guy gardner #green lantern

[the-coconut-asado]

PINTXOS-PERFECT

Believe it or not, there are one or two people out there who aren’t inspired by the idea of San Sebástian. 

The joy of choosing pintxos from the counter ? ‘Health and safety hazard.’ But everything’s fresh! ‘Don’t fancy it’. What about the delicious spider-crab tarts? ‘Don’t like crab’. Gateau Basque? ‘Now I do like cheesecake - but why no biscuit base?’ 

Thankfully I’ve only experienced this pintxos prejudice from a handful of people. For the rest of you: if you don’t yet know that San Sebástian is the culinary capital of Europe, with more Michelin starred restaurants per capita than anywhere else on the continent, then just tell me which rock you’ve been living under and I’ll send my people round. With delicious morsels of wild mushroom. I’m not a monster after all.

Then there are those who love San Sebástian, have visited it several times, but have only the vaguest recommendations of where to eat. Yes I know. Everywhere is good. But just telling me ‘it’s all about the pintxos’ (no shit Sherlock) isn’t really giving me much to go on. So, for those of you venturing to Spain’s most edible city for the first time, or just can’t remember where you ate last time, here are my top recommendations. 

First of all, get yourself on a good food tour. And we went on the best, thanks to a proper, detailed recommendation from my mate Mykayla at work. The first thing you learn about Eskerne, founder of  Discover San Sebastian is that she is more revered than the Mayor- and knows more about the history and gastronomy of the region than any mayor. She met us at the Hotel de Londres at 10.30 sharp and deposited us in the park over four hours later, sated and gasping for superlatives about the food we had eaten. This was a PhD in Pintxos - spider crab tartlets, mind-boggling asian-fusion scallops with samphire, wild mushrooms mixed with egg yolk, octopus on sauteed potato…On and on it went,  setting off many several taste bombs in my mouth. Do yourselves a favour and book her as soon as you have booked your flights. 

But you don’t just have to eat pintxos. My daughter found Bar El Kbzon  near the City’s surfing  beach. For my money the best of San Sebástian’s restaurants: cafe-informal with stunning views of the beach at sunset, and a menu we ended up ordering in its entirety:  best black pudding I’ve ever tasted, heavenly hake and pig’s ear on borlotti beans just three of the reasons to go back. The chef likes Thai food so there were some inspired flavours going on in all of these - plus he makes a mean pad thai if you fancy that. 

Great places to eat are not limited to the city centre. My cousin and her husband took us to Kako Jatetxea, a bistro with classical charm in a town called Astigarraga, just outside the city centre and famous for its cider houses (the main drink of the region along with Txakoli - more of this later). They had a lot going on in their menu but you can’t go wrong with their  surf and turf - a whole pan-fried turbot in a butter sauce and a mammoth rib of beef. 

Want to find that ultimate Gateau Basque? Eskerne  pointed us in the direction of La Viña and advised us to order just a half portion each. The aggressive rubbernecking required to get to the counter and get attention meant I forgot the Spanish for ‘half portion’ and emerged with the full three slices for each of us. It didn’t matter in the end as we demolished them all in a matter of minutes. We also forgot to order the Ximenez sherry to pour over the gateau - Mykayla says this is a must. 

And finally, for super fine dining head to Galerna Jan Edan. I usually prefer generous rustic food to a degustation menu but this one gave us a night to remember: imaginative creations with intense flavours from prawn, pork belly, hake and a strawberry and violet ice cream that over-stimulated my taste buds in the best possible way. All washed down by the region’s signature Txakoli wine (you say Txakoli, I say Chocoli, let’s just pour another glass and forget about it). 

There are hundreds upon hundreds of pintxos bars, restaurants, cafes and gelateria crammed into this petite, beautiful and dramatic-looking city. Don't say I didn't tell you - and try making these dishes to get you in the mood. 

Crab Tarts

I have done my best to recreate the flavours of the version I inhaled in Ganbera pintxos bar. And guaranteed no soggy bottom-pastry. Serves 4 as a starter. 

Ingredients:

250g ready-made shortcrust pastry (or make your own)

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

225g white crab meat

Generous tbsp. brown crab meat

1 banana shallot, chopped finely

1 carrot, chopped finely

4 cloves garlic, chopped finely

250ml shellfish stock

60 ml cognac

3 medium tomatoes, skinned seeded and chopped

1 tsp chilli flakes

1 bunch parsley

25g fresh breadcrumbs, browned in a little oil and tossed with chopped parsley

Knob of butter

How to make.

Heat the oven to 200C. 

Roll out the pastry and cut 8 rounds to fill 8 individual tart cases. Pop the tins onto a baking sheet and bake blind for 10-12 minutes, remove from the oven and put on the side to cool in their tins. When cool, remove from the tins and place the pastry shells back  on the  baking sheet.

To make the filling. Heat 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil in a frying pan and saute the onions, carrot and chilli flakes for 10 minutes. Add the garlic and fry for another minute or so, then add the tomatoes, salt and pepper, cognac, shellfish stock and 200ml water. Bring to a simmer and continue to simmer until the sauce has reduced and you can drag your wooden spoon through it without the mixture closing up quickly.

Turn off the heat, add the crab meats and a bunch of chopped parsley. Cool the mix. 

Turn up the oven to 220C. Fill each of the tart shells with the crab mixture then top each tart with the breadcrumbs and a small knob of butter. Pop back into the oven for 6-8 minutes until crisp and hot. Serve immediately. 

Two Easy Peasy Pintxos

As a parting gift from our tour, Eskerne gave me a copy of Josema Azpeita an Ritxar Tolosa’s The Pintxo Trail. None of the recipes give proportions so I have done the hard work for you while adapting them slightly. Serves 2-3

Pintxos with cream cheese, honey and walnuts

For each person cut 3 slices of a baguette loaf at a diagonal and toast lightly and rub with a clove of garlic. Cool slightly then top with cream cheese with herbs (philly is fine), top with a couple of walnut halves and drizzle with honey.  Complete with a sprinkling of parsley and season. 

Esclavida (catalan vegetables) with anchovy

Heat the oven to 150C.Baste an  aubergine and a red pepper  in extra virgin olive oil, pop onto a baking tray and into the oven for 20 minutes. Remove and then skin the aubergine and red pepper and cut each into 4 slices. Toast the bread and rub with a clove of garlic. Drizzle the toast with olive oil and season. Place the broad strips of cooked vegetable on top and top with two marinated anchovies (buy these from the supermarket chiller cabinet, don’t use ones from a jar). Make a quick garlic dressing with olive oil, garlic and parsley and drizzle over the top. 

Gateau Basque

This version of La Viña’s classic is from Brat restaurant in London via Claire Ptak’s latest confection Love is a Pink Cake. A genius  addition of tapioca flour and cornflour gives a wonderful texture. Serves 6. 

Ingredients:

450g cream cheese

125g caster sugar

3 large eggs

250g double cream

1 tbsp. Crème fraiche

1 tbsp. Vanilla extract

1 tbsp. Tapioca flour

1 tbsp, cornflour

¼ tsp. Sea salt

How to make:

Preheat the oven to 230C. 

Line a 15cm round and 8cm deep cake tin with a single sheet of baking paper that comes up further than the sides of the tin  - this caters for the dramatic rise of the gateau. 

Whisk together the cream cheese and sugar, add the eggs one at a time and continue whisking between each addition until fully incorporated. 

In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients, then add to the cheese mixture and mix everything until smooth and well combined. 

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 40 minutes until black on top, puffed but still has a little wobble. Cool for at least an hour until set, then serve at room temperature. 

This goes magically with some poached plums which you can make while the gateau is in the oven.

[aeoki]

High and Low: At World’s End - Chapter 3

Location: Australian Town Characters: Tetora, Tomoya, Hinata, Touri & Mitsuru 

Season: Autumn Writer: Akira

< The next morning, near a village in the most northern part of Australia. >

Mitsuru: Woohoooo ☆

Our fun school trip is finally starting~! Yay ♪

Tomoya: Not “yay”! This isn’t fun at all!

Why’re we in this awful situation!?

Mitsuru: …Tomo-chan, you’re not having fun?

Tomoya: Huh?

Mitsuru: I wrapped up filming the drama early to meet up with everyone just so I could have heaps of fun with you and Hajime-chan.

Tomoya: R-Right, you were actually supposed to meet up with us later, huh.

Mitsuru: Yeah… But I asked the director and the other actors a huge favour by saying I wanted to go on the school trip no matter what and filmed my parts ahead of schedule, y’know?

But was all of that pointless? Was it just me that wanted to have fun with you and everyone else on this school trip…?

Tomoya: Aww, are you crying? Don’t make that kind of face! You know, I’ve always dreamed of going on a school trip with all of you guys too–

Mitsuru: Tadaa ☆ I’m not crying! I’ve got a smile on my face 100% of the time! Ahahahahaha!

Tomoya: Hey! You were just acting!? So much for me worrying!

Sora: Tomoya-chaaan! Mitsu-chaaan! Anzu-san and the others wanna talk so they’re saying we should meet up over there!

Why are you guys over here? People say it’s dangerous to go off on your own like that!

Tomoya: Sorry. Mitsuru said he wanted to run around on Australian soil and just started running off all of a sudden.

Sora: It’s really dangerous so restrain yourself, okay~?

The environment overseas is really different and Sora can’t really see anything, so even if he took a look, Sora might interpret things wrong…

Tomoya: ? I don’t really know what you’re talking about, but Anzu-san was calling for us, right? I wonder if they’ve found a solution.

Hey, what’re you doing, Mitsuru?

Mitsuru: Look, look, Tomo-chan! There’s a weird animal here! It’s not running away even if I get close to it!

Tomoya: I’m scared of infections and parasites, so don’t touch the wild animals so casually like that! There was something like that written in the guidebook, you know!

Sora: HaHa~ Stop playing around and let’s get a move on~

Location: Australian Town

Hitsugi: Everyone in “Late Departure Group 2”.

We are currently in a rather helpless situation.

Touri: E-Everyone knows that already! We all know we’re in a pretty bad situation!

Tetora: Yeah! What we want are details on our current situation and a specific solution!

Hinata: Calm down, guys~♪ We’re overseas right now and if we make a fuss like we’re back in Japan, the police might come and question us.

That’ll be annoying, yeah? We’re already in a complicated situation but we don’t want things to get even more complicated, right?

Hitsugi: Yes… Please refrain from acting on your own and listen to what we “producers” have to say.

We’re doing our best. We’ll find a solution out of this situation, okay? I can’t do anything myself but I’m sure Anzu-senpai will think of something.

Tetora: We’ve gotta rely on others, huh… Well, we’re in the same boat since there’s nothing we can do either, so it’s hard to complain as well, I guess.

But really, how did things come to this…?

Touri: Yeah! I don’t get it at all! Who should I sue?

Why’re we in a different place from everyone else!?

Tetora: Yeah… That’s the mystery. We were originally supposed to arrive at a pretty developed area in the southern part of Australia.

Hinata: We’re supposed to be in the city with an “ES II”, a building that’s like the knock-off or the twin of ES.

According to the pamphlet for the school trip, we’re supposed to be leisurely touring around Australia with a tour guide…

While also carrying out our idol work. 

Touri: Yeah. It’s like a TV programme where we introduce Australia, right?

I thought that’s what we’ll be doing so I read up on a lot of the local history!

Tetora: Touri-kun, you don’t look it, but you’re actually super diligent, huh.

Touri: What did you say? I’m exactly what I look like: an honour student. I’m gonna be the student council president next year! If anything, you guys are just shrimps with nothing in your brains!

Hinata: Woah, now… Don’t get so riled up. It’ll be really bad if we start panicking and arguing amongst ourselves. We’re already in the worst-case scenario as it is.

Touri: Ugh! But I’m so irritated! Why do we have to put up with something so awful~!?

← Previous Chapter ᠂ ⚘ ˚⊹˚ ⚘ ᠂  Next Chapter →

#high and low

[shadowsong26fic]

Papa and J-----, 28 August ‘34

Author: shadowsong26

Rating: PG/PG-13

Fandom: Les Misérables

Characters: Technically all on-page characters are OCs; Valjean, Cosette, Marius, and Javert are discussed as historical personalities. Backstory Cosette/Marius and heavily implied Valjean/Javert.

Warnings: Nothing specific, I don’t think?

Summary: Euphrasie Pontmercy--known in the art world as La Jardinière--isn’t exactly a household name. Still, the sheer length of her active career (her work was first displayed and sold in 1839, and she left one last work unfinished at her death in 1910) makes her interesting to people who actually study that century in art. But as far as the historical record is concerned, Jardinière seems to have sprung semi-fully-formed from the streets of Paris somewhere in the mid-to-late 1820s. Other than the fact that she was educated in a convent, essentially nothing is known about her parents or her childhood.

Until now.

Or:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a PhD student with no thesis topic must be in want of an undiscovered painting to go absolutely feral over.

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of their respective creators.

Notes: So, this story came out of a midnight/one am rambling conversation with my roommate @tigerkat24. And then we realized it was interesting enough to be worth, like, polishing up and turning into an Actual Thing (translation: tigerkat dared me to actually write it and I was like ‘you know I really could’), so here we are. As the title implies, this is an AU timeline--short version, Javert didn’t die; he went to talk to Valjean some time later, and then just sort of…never left; Valjean also successfully failed to pine away in 1833. All other relevant AU details should be included within the text of the fic, which is set in a vague Present Day. My knowledge is primarily of the musical, though I have drawn in a few details from what I remember of reading (an abridged version of) the novel years ago; tigerkat just read it and has also provided some additional notes/helpful bits and pieces to draw in.

It all started on a blind date.

Which, I mean, when I tell people that’s how I met the love of my life, they assume I mean Phil. Don’t get me wrong, Phil is great, and I love having him in my life and have no intention of changing that any time soon. But he’s not what I’m talking about.

Phil was a friend of a friend of my roommate; I was working on finalizing my thesis topic for my PhD (art history, with a planned focus on the intersection of technological changes and shifts in the art world in the middle third of the nineteenth century). He worked in a bank, not at the university, which was probably for the best. Academia is a small world, and it can get super incestuous when ninety-five percent of the people you meet are, if not actually in your fairly small field, in something related.

So, Phil wasn’t an academic (although he had worked as a freelance translator while getting his CPA), and math (especially money math) has never exactly been my strong suit, but we found plenty of other things to talk about. A shared fondness for murder mysteries, the more ridiculous the better; a couple of fandoms in common; a similar sense of humor. And he was over the moon proud of his older sister, who was apparently making a major name for herself in the world of classical piano, so. You know. He clearly appreciated super-nerdy niche careers, even if he didn’t have one himself.

Besides, it was nice to get a break from going through all of the preliminary research I’d gathered, trying to find a thread to follow and spin into my actual thesis.

It was even nicer when the Agatha Christie movie we saw was better than we expected, and then we spent almost two hours at my favorite Middle Eastern place (best falafel in town) just talking, until they kicked us out at closing time.

Phil was sweet, and kind, and funny, and I’ve always been a sucker for boys with big blue eyes.

Naturally, we ended up back at his place.

He lived at home with his parents--which, no judgement; I’d probably still be living with mine if I hadn’t had to move halfway across the country for my PhD program--but they were out of town for the week, and I like to give my roommate a little more notice before asking for privacy.

His couch was also a hell of a lot nicer than mine.

We’d been getting into a nice rhythm, and then Phil had come up for air--and to strip his shirt the rest of the way off--when it caught my eye.

I’m still not sure what exactly drew my attention. The piece isn’t large; including the frame, it’s only a little bit bigger than a standard letter-sized piece of paper. A simple portrait of two men at a window; one seated, the other standing.

“Oh, hey, what’s that?” I asked.

“Huh?” Phil said, blinking a couple of times, then turning his head to see what I was looking at. “Uh…the painting? It’s…a painting? I don’t know, it’s been there for as long as I can remember.”

“Right,” I said, sitting half-propped-up on my elbows, still looking more at the painting than the (admittedly very pleasant) view of shirtless Phil. “…sorry. Uh. Art nerd brain activating.”

“…right,” he said, and sighed a little, but sat all the way up himself, climbing off me and pulling one of the couch cushions over onto his lap.

“Thanks. Sorry again. Can I take a closer look?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

I smiled at him and headed over to the other side of the room, leaving my own shirt behind.

Could be anywhere from the late 1820s to the 1840s, I guess, I thought. Men’s fashion didn’t provide as many clues as women’s fashion in that period. At least not to me--while I had done some research into fashion and textiles, if only because I was interested in the development of dyes and other pigments, my focus had always been more on painting.

My phone was on the coffee table, right where I’d dumped it when it started getting in the way; I picked it up. “Can I…?” I asked.

“Sure,” Phil said, running a hand through his hair.

“Great.” I took a quick picture of the painting on the wall--I knew a couple people who might have a better time dating it by the clothing than I would.

Right. So, I have at least a vague time period. What else?

The subjects weren’t young men; I’d guess both were somewhere between fifty and seventy or so. The seated man seemed like the older of the two, but that was hard to gauge even with a photograph. He had broad shoulders, a full beard; was wearing a fairly plain dark suit. First impression: quiet, steady, calm, strong. A vague melancholy, but not overwhelming. Just a general vibe.

The other man was positioned just to the side of and slightly behind the chair, standing absolutely perfectly straight--but not stiff; more like the kind of ingrained upright perfection you see in career military men. Impressive muttonchops, rather than a full beard. Everything about him said stern, severe; except for one hand, resting almost gently on the back of the chair.

It was definitely posed--most portraits before the Impressionists were anyway--but there was almost a sort of casual intimacy to it, anyway. What kind, I couldn’t say. But whoever these men were, they were close. One way or another.

“Do you know who the artist was?” I asked.

“Uh, my great-great-something grandmother, I think?” Phil said. He got up off the couch and wandered over to stand next to me. “Like I said, it’s been hanging there as long as I can remember, and I think it’s been in the family forever.”

“Right.”

With that in mind, it could have been an amateur piece; plenty of upper-class and bourgeois women and girls studied painting as just part of how to become an Accomplished Young Lady. But there was something familiar nagging at the corner of my mind. Something about the hand on the back of the chair, or the eyes, or…

If I could get a closer look, really get into the fine detail of brush strokes and other aspects of the composition, maybe it’d fall into place. But the style was definitely familiar, and not in the sense of ‘this was the work of a talented schoolgirl; I’ve seen half a dozen like it before.’

More specific than that.

“What was her name, do you know?”

“Family stories always call her Mémé Cosette,” he said. “But that was a nickname, I think. Her real name was…very French, but, well, that side of my family’s French so that’s, uh, not really surprising.” He frowned. “I know I know it, hang on.”

Well, worth a shot. “Maybe it’ll come to you in a minute,” I said. “Is this the original frame?”

“Far as I know,” he said. “Sorry, like I said, it’s been there forever. Just sort of…part of the living room.”

So, maybe. “Can I take it down? I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Sure,” he said. “…Emilie? It started with an E, I’m absolutely sure.”

“Right,” I said, absently, focused on taking the wooden frame off the wall.

A simple thing, and definitely actual wood, not plastic; probably not brand new. So, it could have been original, or not too much later than the portrait. Or it could have been a decent frame from ten years ago. Once again, hard to say for sure without further study.

I flipped it over. There was a handwritten inscription on the back.

Papa et J---- 28 août ’34.

And the handwriting was--

Oh my God.

“Eugenie? No, that’s not--Euphrasie? Yeah, I think that’s it.”

I had always thought that, when people said their heart skipped a beat, it was a poetic exaggeration. But, hand to God, in that moment, mine did.

“Ari?” Phil asked. “You okay?”

“Euphrasie,” I said. “Euphrasie Pontmercy?”

“That…sounds right,” he said. “…wait, you know her? Uh, of her?”

I turned the painting back over, and--yeah, yes, absolutely, that was it. That was what I was seeing--the distinctive way she did detail work in her early period, particularly in the shading around the eyes and hands in her rare portraits. The things that show the most humanity, as one of my high school drawing teachers had put it. I’d still need a closer look, outside the frame, to be absolutely sure, but.

“I--yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I…I know her.”

And the inscription on the back--Papa et J----, 28 août ’34. Papa and J----, August 28, ‘34. 1834, obviously. And--Papa.

Holy fucking shit.

“Wait,” Phil said. “Was…was Mémé Cosette actually famous? Like, people study her?”

“She was pretty well known for a while, but mostly it’s the length of her career that makes her interesting,” I said. “Not like she was a major player in any of the art movements she was on the fringes of, but she adapted some of their techniques to her own style as time went on, and…yes. Yes, people study her.” I took a breath. “Is there…do you think there’s any chance your parents would let me borrow this? To do more detailed study and analysis, I mean. Maybe. Maybe write a paper?” Or a thesis?

“Probably,” he said. “I mean, you can always ask, and I don’t see any reason why they’d say no?”

“Great,” I said. “Uh. Just let me…” I took a couple more pictures with my phone--the portrait, the frame, the inscription--and then carefully, and hopefully without being too obviously reluctant, hung it back in its place on the wall. “…I’m sorry, Phil, I have to…”

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Rain check?”

I blinked and--we’d had a good time, before I sort of ruined it, and he was very beautiful, standing there with his shirt off and those big blue eyes. “Definitely,” I said, leaning in to give him a very quick peck on the lips on my way to collect my shirt. “I’ll call you. For more than just the painting. Promise.”

He smiled, and. Oh, yeah. Definitely calling him back.

Later. In a few days.

First, though. That painting.

#shadowsong writes other fandoms #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs

[snarky-art]

oh my your Lovix is beautiful 💖 What have you planned for the 3 pairs of wings ?

Ok so I’ve thought a lot about these guys and they were super difficult for a while because I just,, wasn’t sure really lol

BUT! I have eventually decided I am going to stick with the theme that because Believix in my thing is a result of magical fae from all over Earth collaborating together, the wings are going to be that too instead of being from different subsets of magic.

Disclaimer for ideas here: I have talked to a few people I know who are Aborignal ( which is such a large blanket I know but I have spoken to a few who go by that term and specifically one indigenous person of the Torres Island Strait Islands) as well as a very kind person whom I don’t personally know who is Aboriginal and just wanted to share their thoughts, but I am simply a white person from the US and if I am told by other indigenous peoples belonging to these groups that they think this isn’t ok, LET ME KNOW. I’m doing my best and do what I can to educate myself but that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna fuck up.

SO, for Tracix, the peoples that will later be called the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia made these. I’m basing this off the fact that they have such a rich oral history with so much information and accuracy, with stories leading all the way back to the Pleistocene era even. This knowledge and way of recounting history with such specific details allowed them to craft an ability they gave physical form to in the way of wings that allowed for others to access this ability and if they already have an ability similar to this, it gives them a huge boost too.

Speedix was made by The Kalenjin peoples of Kenya. They’re some of the best runners on Earth, and they wanted to find a way to allow others to appreciate their own abilities thanks to their culture and lifestyle. The best they could do for others who don’t live the way they do is give them a speed boost since something like changing a beings entire physiology to match the adaptions they have as a result of their very active lifestyle didn’t seem like a great idea to them lol

And Zoomix was made by the Irish people. This is based off the fact that I’m Scots-Irish with most of that being of Irish ancestry from my birth dad and I think that the continued resilience of appreciation for “old Paganism” despite the Brit’s best attempts to destroy any traces of it is good and badass lol. More detailed too since I know more about this history too and am less scared of fucking up by totally misrepresenting something and/or saying something completely ignorant.

Basically my idea is that The Picts started experimenting with runes and symbols as a way to try and bolster new abilities, and the Irish continued to build on that after the Picts were gone. These attempts can be seen in the carvings of rock and man made set ups utilizing the land. Eventually they were able to specialize a form of magic that allowed for teleportation as a result of this work, concentrating this magic on the items, making it flow and swirl through the reliefs and the carvings or bounce between the markers they’ve set up. This is a bit heavier and more difficult to manage than the abilities of the other 2 wings as it involves physically moving a whole being with one’s own abilities and the aid of outside sources i.e. the symbols and physical aids. The best way they could find to remedy this in a way that allowed for everyone to have a chance to use it was to inscribe the same swirls, symbols, and patterns into the wings themselves. It takes a lot more magic and concentration to use this ability too than the others. Part of why this magic operates so differently from the other 2 is also because things like runes and symbols are typically utilized more by witches than fae, and it was a bit of a collaborative effort between the two groups to try and find a way to do this, so it utilizes what could be classified as dark magic practices (drawing from the magic and energy of the surroundings of a being) to transition into a more light magic based ability (calling upon the power of one’s individual magical core to finish the task)

Also peep me drawing from some Ancient Aliens style bullshit here with the “these old markings surely are sign of an Alien Transporter and this big circle of rocks marked the landing pad for their flying machine” but with magical beings

YEAH THOUGH! I’ll make a post eventually with the designs of the wings now that I have an actual background laid out for them:)

#winx club #winx #asks #lore #worldbuilding #winx club rewrite #winx club redo #winx club reboot #believix #transformations