Does she… hate her children? Despise having to be involved in any way - does the action of simply discussing Damian piss this woman off?
Because if so, then god damn I love it, because we get to see the truly perfect antithesis to Loid and Yor.
The Forgers aren’t perfect, but the way they involve themselves in Anya’s life is beautiful. It’s warm and loving while teaching her to make and respect boundaries (that’s difficult for a telepath lmao), but their walls almost always come crashing down the second they find themselves alone in each other’s company. Loid may be strict and Yor may be a little too enthusiastic, but every action they take for Anya is for her sake, and every mistake they make is an experience they immediately learn from to better raise Anya.
The Desmonds aren’t physically abusive, nor do they scream nor degrade their kids. Both Desmond scions are clearly well-off, having wealth and service in spades. Everything they could ever want, at the snap of their fingers. Except their parent’s love and attention. Donovan sees his sons as tools to further his name and goals, while Melinda (and this is just conjecture) shows shades of a woman who never wanted children and is searching for ways to live and enjoy her life free of their burden.
(Little tangent, but people, women especially, shouldn’t be saddled with kids if they do not wish to. Their body, their choice, and no one should ever say otherwise. That being said, when the child is born, the parent has a lifelong responsibility to that child, and regret is no longer an option. I see so many parents who practically begged to have kids, but ended up resenting them, and in turn their kids grow and feel the same way to them. You can never let your children feel like they are a mistake. Never.)
To Donovan, his children are materials that can be shaped into weapons for his political gain and clout. To Melinda, (again, just a hunch), they are nuisances she can’t be bothered to deal with.
But Loid and Yor, who don’t share a single drop of blood with Anya? Who created and joined their family for self-protection? They can’t stop themselves - they shower Anya with love. They can’t spoil her with gifts like Becky and Damien get, but they never starve Anya of what matters most: their love, their time, and their energy. Anya is an esper - if she grew up with people like Desmonds, she’d know immediately she was unloved. Hell, she has! Returned to foster homes again and again. So it is beautiful that a girl who can read her parent’s anxieties and fears has never once heard them think she was a mistake (well other than that first episode with Loid lol). They have had every opportunity to grow resentful of Anya, but they never have. They think the world of her. Mr. “It’s for the mission” Twilight bends over backwards on a whim for his daughter. Yor “I won’t let my daughter die in school” Forger would commit war crimes if she even thought her precious child got a boo boo.
The Desmonds, at best, see their children as investments and at worst mistakes. But no matter what Anya does, good or bad, it doesn’t ever change their perspective of her.
She isn’t just a cover child to them. She’s their daughter, and they’d shake heaven and earth for her when the Desmonds can’t even be bothered to attend their son’s orientation day.
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prompt idea! :D
steve being a poet and eddie being a songwriter. they both reference each other in their works and no one has put it together yet.
( also hi you're awesome )
Oooh anon I love this, this is such an intriguing concept bc the possibilities are ENDLESS with this one! I hope you like the direction I ended up taking it in :) (and thank you so much for dropping this in my ask box! <3 )
EDIT: I wrote an expanded version for this one and it's also on ao3 :D
---
Jeff was the one who introduced Eddie to Ronan Right. His mom was moving and when Eddie visited to help, he found his friend with his nose buried in a small book that was nearly falling apart in his hands.
“What's that?” Eddie asked, flopping down next to Jeff among the boxes.
“My mom's favorite poet,” Jeff mumbled, barely glancing up from the page.
And as soon as Eddie got a chance to pick up the book from where Jeff had left it, he was hooked. He was no help at all for Jeff's poor mom, completely engrossed in poem after poem, reading them again and again and again.
Eddie liked reading poetry to get some inspiration for his songwriting, but a lot of poetry had this atmosphere of pretentiousness around it. This didn't. It was surprisingly simple. To the point, with a rawness to it, mostly short poems that had a simplicity with which they managed to cut right to the heart of things.
Ever since that day, Ronan Right became Eddie's biggest source of inspiration. He'd never start working on new songs before reading one of Right's poems first. And whenever he got stuck on his lyrics, he'd pick up one of Right's books – and every time, without fail, he'd find something in there to help him find the right words.
---
When people would ask Steve what inspired him, his answer was always the same, always simple: music. Most people probably assumed that by that, a poet would mean classical music or maybe jazz of some kind. They were wrong: Steve Harrington, professionally known as Ronan Right, liked to blast the most screamy metal imaginable whenever he was writing – much to the discontent of his poor neighbors. He didn't care much for lyrics, it was all about the sound for him: about volume, about harmonies, about a combination of ingredients that somehow managed to flip a switch inside of his brain that unlocked the more creative ways to look at words.
His favorite band was called Corroded Coffin. Something about them stood out in the long list of metal bands he loved to listen to. It was something about the sound of the singer's voice, about the guitar riffs, that simply made sense to him, made the words that he was looking for bubble up to the surface naturally.
He got halfway through the first song on Corroded Coffin's newly released album, when he froze at his desk. He didn't care much for lyrics, but those words... There was something familiar about them.
He replayed the song from the beginning and started frantically flipping through the pages of one of his earliest poetry bundles... Yeah, there definitely was something familiar about those lyrics.
They weren't copied, exactly. It could just be a coincidence.
But the album kept playing on and Steve kept getting distracted by the lyrics because there was so much familiarity in them. It wasn't like the singer was stealing from him, it wasn't even like he was taunting his copyright or anything like that... It was like he was building on Steve's words. Like Steve had laid a foundation that had sparked Corroded Coffin to make something beautiful. Like the two of them shared a mind, a soul, an inspiration.
And Steve wrote the best poem he had ever written, in one go, that day.
---
More bundles followed. More albums were released. And they kept interlocking with each other, one causing the other to do something new, try something different, figure something out.
Ronan Right was still an obscure poet, well-respected but not mainstream enough for bigger successes. Corroded Coffin was still an obscure metal band, praised by the connoisseur but too experimental to ever get anywhere bigger than the verge of the metal scene. The only one who noticed the textual similarities between the two, was Jeff's mother. She'd smile her knowing smile and chuckle quietly, delighting in her own private understanding.
---
A new book was about to get published. Steve had to drive down to Chicago to meet with his publicist and talk some things through, but his car was in the shop so he got on a train instead. The meeting went well, Don't try to be a hero officially got the green light, and feeling content, Steve pulled out the latest Corroded Coffin cd to put in his walkman as soon as he got on the train back home.
“Hey,” the guy opposite him said with a smile and a nod towards Steve's walkman, just before Steve could put on his headphones. “Corroded Coffin, nice.”
“You know them?” Steve asked, taken by surprise, a matching smile creeping onto his own face.
“Yeah.” The guy chuckled. “Yeah, I know them.”
Sunlight fell through the window and shone on the big rings around the guy's fingers, catching Steve's eye – and pulling his gaze towards the tiny book he was holding in his hands.
“Hey,” he said, “Ronan Right, nice.”
The guy stared at him for a few seconds, something like disbelief in his big brown eyes. “You know him?!”
Steve felt laughter bubble up in his chest. “Yeah, I know him.”
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So we know firebending gets weaker at night and stronger during the day, that's been established. But are the phases of the moon also a factor into how powerful firebending can still be at night?
Think about it, the light of the moon is a reflection of the sun. So if there's a full moon, firebending should be more powerful than during a new moon. It wouldn't be as powerful as during the day obviously, but it would be significantly stronger than when there's no moon visible.
That's probably why the fire nation also depends on the moon like Iroh says. Firebenders would have given themselves quite the disadvantage if they had succeeded in destroying the moon. And if the other nations were to figure it out, they could have planned an invasion at night. (Of course the invasion during an eclipse was also a good idea, but the eclipse only lasts a few minutes, while nighttime lasts several hours.)
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So, regarding playing with text generation... I resisted the temptation for a while, but then, Gemini became available. So OK, I opened it, accepted terms etc.
I tried a few factual queries, and, well, it even had SOURCES for me (and they were valid links).
So I asked, can I ask question in Polish? Why yes, I can.
Good.
My next question, in Polish, was "Jak brzmi tekst hymnu włoskiego" (What are the lyrics of the Italian anthemn). And lo and behold, it was delivered... but wait...
I mean. If there is any national anthem I may claim to know reasonably well, apart from our own Polish one, is Fratelli d'Italia. For the simple reason that I'm a bit weird. OK. Nevermind. I know it.
And... well.
Almost. Like, 3/4 good. I mean... Even more, because line 7 starts with "che", too. However, ok, I can assume, maybe there is another, older version I never learned. Or. Whatever. Something. Whoa, there is a link!
The page under that link has the correct text, which is:
«Fratelli d'Italia,
l'Italia s'è desta,
dell'elmo di Scipio
s'è cinta la testa.
Dov'è la vittoria?!
Le porga la chioma,
ché schiava di Roma
Iddio la creò.»
Then the chorus was also altered:
Stringiamci a coorte,
siam pronti alla morte.
L'Italia chiamò.
Noi siamo da Dio,
e giuriam sul nostro core:
o vinceremo o periremo.
Because that second half has been pulled out of some weird place.
I also asked (still in Polish! That's important!) where in the text is the Eagle of Austria mentioned.
Apparently somewhere HERE:
Does anyone see the eagle? I can't.
(de facto it is mentioned in the LAST stanza)
Now I also asked where Poland is mentioned in the Italian anthem, because I'm a self-centered witch. And also, I know it's in the last stanza.
So apparently "and another is moving and coming towards us" is the OTHER EAGLE, which is Poland, because, see, here is the EAGLE OF AUSTRIA (Orzeł Austrii), and, well, Poland has an eagle in the coat of arms. Ok. OK. I'm still OK. This looks like someone took second stanza of the anthem and mashed it up with SOMETHING.
I did several more attempts.
And then.
I decided OK, you keep lying to this Polish woman.
LET'S SEE WHAT AN ITALIAN WILL GET.
So I asked, ON THE SAME SESSION. With my rather broken Italian. "Please tell me, what is the text of "Il Canto degli Italiani" (which is an alternative but valid name of the Anthem of Mamelli or, Fratelli d'Italia).
And the answer was...
Gemini started writing the same outcome, as before, but now in Italian. Mind you, you can SEE as it is putting stuff on the screen, almost like on an old-style communication app.
So I can see, it begings with blahablahblah about the song, then it starts printing out the lines...
...got to line 6, "le porga la chioma"...
...stopped..
Deleted everything and suddenly displayed this:
I can't help you, because I am only a language model and I don't have the capacity to elaborate or understand this request.
And I am here like OK, little shit. So you are OK with lying to some stupid Slavic girl who asks for an Italian anthem and she is giving you all chances to come clear, because, she is asking you obviously clarifying questions, GIVING YOU TIME and so on. And yeah. YOU LIE.
But then the Slavic girl turns out to know Italian and you are the derp dog in the corner, because you are afraid I'm going to smack you in your bites, bytes and logical gates.
So, yeah. Here's a little story of how I found out that Gemini is afraid of Italian women ;)
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