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#i don’t have the time or character limit to provide context
am-i-interrupting · 10 days
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Alastor ideal type in partner headcanons? I've been thinking about this and your one of the few writers I see that write alastor as close to canonly possible as can be and I really appreciate that in your writing so I knew I'd get a pretty close and accurate answer on this😭 hopefully you can get to this when it's okay for you but when you do thank you so much!!❤️
Aw, thank you, I’m so flattered!
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Now, we know Alastor is for sure in the ace spectrum in canon and potentially on the aro spectrum as well and as someone who is on both of those, I have thoughts.
I think that Alastor would fall under the aegosexual category and be slightly sexually repulsed. He’s not completely thrown off by the idea of sex but I don’t feel like he would be very comfortable viewing himself in a sexual light and even others.
As someone who relates to Alastor on several levels, I feel like he would have a similar view to sex as I do. Kind of the opposite of projection here because I do think it makes sense for his character. Where it’s less about the act of getting yourself or someone off and not even about pleasure but about the ability to cause a reaction from someone that not everyone can cause. That will obviously play into any sex life you may have and thus you’d have to be okay with him not viewing you sexually even within a sexual context and more like a test subject.
Then his possible aromantic orientation. Whoever would be with him would have to be okay with him saying the words “I love you” and not being able to describe what that means. Once again, less projection and more if I feel like this thing about me also fits him. The lines between romantic and platonic in society are so rigid and the things he feels fluctuate. He knows he loves you differently than say Niffty, Rosie, or Charlie but it wouldn’t necessarily be romantic, more so bordering on it, if that makes since. Again, hard to describe.
Now in terms of a partner, some absolute musts:
Must be willing to cause chaos.
Must test his limits/challenge him occasionally.
Must have a similar moral code to his own.
Must be able to find entertainment outside of modern technology.
Must be alright with not knowing everything about him.
Some preferences:
Enjoy jazz.
Knows how to dance or be willing to learn.
Join him in hunts/killings.
Be strong headed.
Have traditional manners.
I think generally he would like someone who is very stubborn which will both provide him with entertainment and cause him to become his own. To be challenged in how to do things or how he sees things.
He’d need someone who would be willing to indulge and encourage his behavior. But perhaps due to that stubbornness be able to also reel him in.
Alastor has been described several times I believe as having a moral code to his killings. Obviously this will be a strong moral code as it tells him who to kill. This is not something he would budge on and if you do not agree with his moral code you can say goodbye to being romantic with him.
Being able to find entertainment outside modern technology isn’t as hard as some people believe. Whatever happened between him and Vox was at least the final nail in the coffin for him about modern technology and it would not be allowed in any of his spaces or when he’s trying to be intimate with you in any form being emotionally or physically.
He will not tell you everything. Some things (like his emotions towards you) he cannot describe. Other things (like his deal) he will refuse to elaborate on if you even know at all. The same is true for you. He knows when to not push. He’s good at reading people but he also trusts you to come to him if you need help and he expects you to return the sentiment.
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imbitterr · 7 months
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this may not make sense, but i like to think that bitores méndez sort of had a soft spot for luis. before my ass gets jumped with “he tied him up in a sack and left him to die!!!” JUST BEAR WITH ME. let me be a little delusional and share my hc, pretty please.
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allow me to sidetrack and provide some context for a moment. if you already know all of the information about the village’s history then you could skip this next part or skim read!
i never see people talk about méndez’ backstory or just the backstory of the village in general. we get a pretty fair amount of history into the last decade or so of the village, in particular into méndez and his life as the chief (previously a priest), as well as luis and his family. we know that when luis was a child that bitores would visit him and his family a lot, and that he actually took a liking to luis because he was seen as a “genius”. we also know that luis’ mother passed during childbirth and that later down the line his grandfather (whom he was in the care of) passed too. this was because he was attacked by a wolf while out hunting with luis, and in the days following he began to lose his mind. méndez had tried to support the grandfather, but ultimately knew he was going to die and in hopes to avoid the spread of this disease, he came to the conclusion with the rest of the village to burn the grandfather’s house down with him inside. luis watched the home burn down until the next morning where he fled the village and supposedly ‘vanished’.
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now, i wont drab on about the rest of the history with méndez and the steelworks and the village’s poverty, but all you need to know is that the los illuminados cult worked their way into the village and infected its people. saddler then commanded that any outsiders were to be killed upon entry to the village.
i think that because méndez was so immersed in his community that he remembered luis when he came back to the village; i believe he still possessed some form of mental clarity deep down. i think he partly felt connected to luis due to his fondness during his childhood, but also because luis had to watch his home get destroyed with his grandfather inside. guilt. so i like to imagine that méndez purposefully violated saddler’s order and kept him hidden away in the basement of his childhood home instead.
this is just a little hc that i wanted to expand on for my own sake! if i got anything wrong, please feel free to point it out to me because i am not a wizard and i don’t always get everything right with the somewhat limited resources we have :) i just like to sympathise with the characters, especially ones like méndez who are easily overlooked as mindless villains. in reality, bitores méndez is a victim of his own and i would love to delve into that topic more some time!
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samglyph · 2 months
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Ok this is my blog I’m allowed to post my opinions
Hazbin Hotel pros
1. Characters: I like the lesbians. Angel dust is good. I have a Jeremy Jordan bias and I enjoy pathetic men so of course I enjoyed Lucifer’s scenes. Originally I thought that they were overusing Alastor (since imo those types of overpowered chaotic characters ie. Bill cipher, Kayne, etc. work best when their scenes are limited to amplify the mystery and the threat) and while I still kinda think that, with the context of the last episode I understand that he needed some extra scenes to make the audience more invested in him specifically, and also since setting him up over and over again as a powerhouse makes it more rewarding when he gets his shit rocked. Also because he gets more screen time we get one of my favorite songs, so I’ll allow it.
2. Music: the music is fun! It’s punchy! It serves narrative purposes. Personally I think some of the slower songs are a little weak and a bit too exposition heavy but the performances are decent and I like jazz and broadway singers. Moving on.
3. Narratives and themes: listen. My favorite theme. Of anything. Is “‘bad’ people can improve if provided with a support system”. And also “things you’ve done in the past and things that have been done to you don’t have to define you” So obviously I was going to like that. Plus I was raised Catholic so that whole scene up in heaven. Oofta. Probably second favorite song. Emily come with me let’s work out our trauma of parental figures lying to us about morality.
Cons
1. Pacing: suffers from what I’m going to refer as “Witcher 2019 syndrome” where it does such a bad job of actually showing time passing that when someone says “there’s only one month until the deadline” you the audience member are like. What do you mean. It’s only been like two weeks. Tops. What do you mean it’s been five months. No it hasn’t.
1.5 (since this is the same problem continued) Length/format: Hazbin hotel, in my opinion, would work best as a 20 episode season, with each episode having an A plot focused on a member of the hotel doing the growth thing, and then have the through line of the season be the heaven thing, which they obviously TRIED to do, but since they only had 8 episodes, they had to give more time to the heaven plot and less time to ensemble character growth, which I think really causes the plot (and the characters!) to suffer.
2. The pilot: the show works less if you haven’t seen the pilot, and since the pilot isn’t included in the seasons episodes, that means if a viewer stumbles across the show without knowing about it before hand, they’ll have a harder time connecting some things, and the hotel isn’t explained well enough right off the bat. Like, it’s easy to figure out, but without the pilot certain things just aren’t explained.
3. Some of the character designs irk me.
I know this is technically more cons than pros but I do think the pros make it watchable. It’s just. Fine. Like it’s an ok show. I post about plenty of ok shows.
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lunanoc · 2 months
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PART III: WHO ARE KING SHANG OF LU AND THE IRON-MASKED GENTLEMAN, AND WHY IS IT EVEN IMPORTANT
finally we’re reaching the end of this thing
(to see previous disclaimers and context here’s part I and part II of this madness)
blanket spoiler warning for the books once again
more disclaimers, the entirety of this part is where i veer solidly into crack theory and full-on interpretation, so while everything i’m presenting here does have arguments based on sources that’s important we do love sources, it’s very much speculation and not hard fact
now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into the really wild stuff
with the various versions of “king shang of lu”’s and the iron-masked gentleman’s story, along with king mu of zhou’s story more or less unpacked (or as unpacked as they can be given we don’t know everything or even have a definitive truth), the real question then becomes what exactly you do with that information
based on what we’ve determined so far through the various versions of these characters’ stories, and taking into account the dubious nature of some or all of them to some degree, i feel there are a few base assumptions and conclusions you can come to, and that i’ll be working with from here on out:
the silkbook that wu xie found in “king shang of lu”’s coffin was indeed a fake, and was placed there with wu xie in mind, knowing that he would find it, and its purpose was to ease wu xie into the game the wu and xie families had been playing with the wang family. whether it was wu sanxing himself or the wang family who did it isn’t certain, and while either is a solid option, @tiesanjiaoshenanigans raised some solid arguments in favor of it being wu sanxing that you can read in their reblog here. in any case, it’s highly unlikely that it was xiaoge. grain of salt because i haven’t reached this point myself, but i’ve looked into a particular passage in ten years (Ten Years, Ch. 31, Key) where wu xie thinks back on the seven star palace, and while he does speculate that wu sanxing had a hand in using the silkbook jin wantang brought to him for his own purposes, wu xie also works on the assumption that it was xiaoge who swapped out a real silkbook for the fake one that contained the first version of king shang of lu’s story, and that his unease was due to recovered memories. granted wu xie does also speculate that he’d had the impression that xiaoge had been to the seven star palace several times before, which is entirely possible due to its significance in relation to “the truth of the world” (credit to @kelly42fox for speculating that maybe the headless corpse thrown into the sacrificial ding cauldron at the entrance of the seven star palace was in fact that missing blood zombie that xiaoge had subdued on a previous visit, and it was this memory that was triggered). however, while wu xie’s word is generally the most trustworthy simply because he’s dmbj’s main narrator, bases his assumptions on logic, and readily course corrects when he’s proven wrong (so in that sense he’s not the type of unreliable narrator who deliberately misleads the reader), he’s still a limited pov character, and what wu xie thinks he knows isn’t always necessarily the truth. because again, xiaoge planting the fake silkbook implies either he or chen pi ah si had a solid motivation for deceiving wu xie specifically, which seems odd all things considered
the wang family’s version of the tale of king shang of lu is the closest we have to the truth simply by virtue of it being the most detailed, of providing additional information that conveniently sheds light both on things mentioned in prior books and things mentioned in later books, and of it being a tale they clearly believe in. while it’s likely not the entire truth, both because they have a clear bias, and because they themselves are lacking key elements of this history, namely what “the truth of the world” is and what their feud with the zhang family truly stems from (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 146, Wang Zanghai), it’s the best candidate so far
the iron-masked gentleman from the first two versions of “king shang of lu”’s story and the owner of the fox mask from the wang family’s story are the same person, and there might be more to his identity than you’d think
with all this being said, what’s left to consider is the possible identities of the characters in this story, namely king shang of lu, the iron-masked gentleman, and king mu of zhou, and the ramifications of those possibilities
let’s start with the iron-masked gentleman, as he’s arguably the most nebulous of the three, and for the sake of convenience i’m going to refer to him as just iron mask from here on out since that’s what he’s best known as
ironically however, the first detail i want to bring attention to regarding him is that he specifically wears a fox mask adorned with “patterns often found on bronze ware”, bronze ware being so precious a material at the time that it was used almost exclusively for ritual objects, most often funerary ones (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 132, Lesson). later, we learn from the wang instructor that similar fox masks were correlated with a specific group of tomb robbers operating in shandong (where this story takes place) during the same time period (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 134, Deception). based on this alone, i feel it’s safe to say that some type of parallel is being drawn between both iron mask, and if not this particular group of grave robbers, then at the very least the activity of robbing tombs. this detail will be important in a bit
for now, let’s look at how iron mask is presented to the reader in the various versions of king shang of lu’s story we’re successively given:
in the first version taken from the fake silkbook, iron mask plays a fairly neutral role despite helping king shang of lu to find the famed jade burial armor, which ironically in this version he also reveals the existence of to the man he advises
in both the second version briefly mentioned by xiaoge and in the third version given by the wang family, iron mask plays a more duplicitous role, either by stealing the jade armor for himself, or by sharing in duping the ruler of the state of lu to acquire his resources to find the jade burial armor in king mu of zhou’s tomb
according to the wang family’s version of the story, iron mask wasn’t king shang of lu’s advisor, but rather the advisor of the ruler of the state of lu, and as such, while he wasn’t in a position of direct power himself, he was in a position to influence said power, and he clearly did given he deliberately swayed the ruler of the state of lu into granting resources to rob king mu of zhou’s tomb. it’s also noteworthy enough to mention that the state of lu happens to be where confucius was born among other eminent scholars of the spring and autumn period, the intellectually prosperous period preceding the warring states period, and the one during which king mu of zhou supposedly began to implement his plan by incorporating the guarantee of tomb robbing into chinese tradition itself (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 135, Stone Box). as such, the state of lu had a particularly important cultural influence on the rest of china both at the time and going forward. what i’m getting at by bringing this up is that iron mask was therefore not only in a position to influence the court of just any of the many states of the eastern zhou dynasty, he was in a position to influence one of the more prominent states of the time that had been a hub for some of the foundations of chinese culture for millenia to come. that iron mask was the one to recommend “king shang” to the ruler of the state of lu in the first place, clearly long before king shang ever had any sort of prominent position at court, further solidifies this idea.
and while there’s no direct evidence to infer that king shang, iron mask, and king mu might have been searching for and robbing tombs before iron mask ever brought up the idea of robbing king mu’s to the ruler of the state of lu, the previous connection between iron mask and the grave robbers with fox masks seems to hint at that possibility, and the narrative, by drawing this parallel, lends itself to interpreting iron mask and these fox-mask wearing grave robbers as some sort of organized collective
as mentioned in a previous part, the wang instructor explains to li cu that a number of these fox masks were found in tombs all over shandong, and that grave robbers of the time associated foxes with grave robbing because they’d often burrow in grave robber tunnels and around graveyards. what this then means is that, assuming these fox mask-wearing grave robbers and iron mask are indeed connected, then the activity of grave robbing itself is also connected to iron mask, or rather iron mask is connected to tomb robbing. as for the reasoning behind why someone would consistently wear a mask to the point their identity becomes eclipsed by it, the easiest answer is to assume that concealing their identity was maybe the point, and in the case of iron mask, given we have no information on his real name or anything else about him really, if that was his goal, then he clearly succeeded. therefore this fox mask he wears potentially has the dual purpose of both hiding his identity, and establishing some form of kinship with others who wore similar masks
to sum up then, iron mask was a man whose true identity and name remains unknown, who held an influential position in the court of one of the more prominent and certainly most culturally significant states of the eastern zhou dynasty, was associated in some capacity with grave robbing via kinship with a group of people who wore the same type of mask as him, and he used his influence at court to sway the ruler he advised into taking actions that benefited him in some capacity. as it happens, we know of at least one organized group of people in dmbj’s universe who also held influential positions in various imperial courts, are associated with grave robbing, and used their influence in spheres of power to sway rulers and/or the course of history in directions that benefited them and/or their endgame
do you see where i’m going with this
again, there’s nothing anywhere that can directly confirm that either iron mask and/or the fox-masked grave robbers were members of the zhang family or even associated with them, but there’s also nothing to technically disprove it either so i’ll just. leave the parallels here for people’s consideration
but where things get even more interesting is when you stop to then consider who “king shang of lu” might be
outside of the very first stone slab we get in the seven star palace that describes king shang of lu as having been “born with the ghost seal in hand” and the command of the army of the dead, if we assume that version 1 of his story in the silkbook that wu xie finds is dubious at best, then we don’t really get all that much about king shang of lu’s life or identity. the wang family’s version describes him as being introduced to the court of the state of lu as a descendent of the zhou emperor and as a “strange man” or “奇人” (qiren), which can either mean a “strange” person or an “extraordinary” person, as in having extraordinary talents, which arguably, given what his tomb looks like, he was (Sand Sea Part III, Ch. 132, Lesson).
beyond this however, there’s nothing in the wang family’s version to suggest that king shang of lu was anyone of note before iron mask quite literally pulled him out of thin air, as if he’d never existed until he suddenly appeared at court one day like a mysterious messenger from the beyond that the ruler of the state of lu, if not purports him to be, then may also believe him to be. the mystery persists with the tale of how king shang of lu supposedly gained his title by communing with the dead king mu of zhou to ask permission to open his tomb, since while we know that this perspective on what happened is in fact skewed by what the ruler of the state of lu who was tricked saw, and that in reality, king mu of zhou wasn’t dead, knowing this doesn’t answer how king shang of lu actually acquired the ghost seal or who he really is, if his identity is even significant. that he was “born with the ghost seal” in hand is likely a descriptor made to reflect him coming out of the coffin he’d been sealed as if “reborn” under his new title with the proof of his “covenant” with king mu of zhou. however, given the meaning of the name 殇 shang mentioned earlier (that is to say “to die young or at war”), and despite the explanation given of his title as a means to justify the subsequent robbing of king mu of zhou’s tomb, it nonetheless leaves you wondering why this name, and why specify that he was a direct descendant of king mu rather than simply “forming a covenant” with him? it could simply be that it was the most efficient ploy to manipulate the ruler of the state of lu into finding convenient moral outs, and there’s nothing more to read into it than the first step of the elaborate plan king mu of zhou had roped king shang of lu and iron mask into
but consider: we’ve established that while it seemed as if there were only two people working together, in fact there were three. but what if against all odds, there really were only two people in the end? after all, a third party is never really hinted at in the earlier versions of this story we get in book 1, unless you count the initial corpse in the fake silkbook version of the story that king shang supposedly removed from the jade burial armor when he found it, but that can’t have been king mu if king mu was in fact alive. what i’m saying is, what if we consider the crazy possibility that king mu of zhou and king shang of lu were in fact the same person
we know that king mu of zhou faked his death centuries before, and while he might have simply sought out and convinced king shang and iron mask of his identity, objectively, the less outside parties involved in his plan, the better. to be fair, it’s entirely possible that king mu used himself as a living example that immortality existed in order to bait king shang and iron mask into helping him, only for them to betray him later and successively take the jade armor for themselves. but if you consider the possibility that king shang was nothing more than an alias king mu used to “return to life” so to speak, it wouldn’t be less fitting of an explanation, as who could possibly have stood to recognize the face of a man centuries dead? of course, nothing really exists to solidly confirm this idea, which is the case for pretty much all of this “meta” that’s entirely speculation at this point but consider
after all, king mu of zhou saw “the truth of the world” in the queen mother of the west’s kingdom. i’ll come back to her briefly later, but we also know that to our knowledge, before wang zanghai, the zhang family were the only other people to have access to that “truth”. it’s reasonable to assume that king mu of zhou, having seen the “truth of the world” and returned from the queen mother of the west’s kingdom changed from it in more ways than one, might have also gained knowledge of another party who knew this “truth”. it’s equally reasonable to assume that rather than go through a third party and thus introduce an unknown variable into his plan, and seeing as king mu of zhou had been “dead” long enough that no one would recognize him should he choose to assume a different identity, it would have simply been easier to approach the only other party who both shared in the same forbidden knowledge, as well as presumably shared similar goals to some extent. and if iron mask was a zhang, then coming back to the previous point, given his particular social status, iron mask would have been the prime candidate for king mu to turn to for assistance. it also stands to reason that if iron mask was a zhang, then by extension a member of the zhang family would have accepted a mutually beneficial arrangement. after all, king mu’s plan and goals aligned somewhat with the zhang family’s interests, and they had to have been aware of king mu’s covert manipulation during the spring and autumn period. using grave robbing as a means of perpetuating curated traditions and culture over centuries, manipulating the flow of history, and thus making it extremely easy to practice convenient historical revisionism perfectly aligned with the zhang family’s designs. arguably it’s also precisely what the zhang family had been doing and continued to do, as wu xie himself eventually speculates, wondering if the zhang family had used tomb robbing as a means of disseminating if not false, then modified histories in order to control china’s “fate” through the ages (Tibetan Sea Flower, Ch. 67, Biggest Secret)
in addition to that, considering we know the ghost seal is something tied to the main zhang family, particularly zhang qiling, and that it allows passage into the bronze gate beneath changbai mountain that houses the ultimate (which is what “the truth of this world” ostensibly is) past the ghost army that does exist (though whether they can be controlled is something we have no evidence of), it’s also not a stretch of the imagination to consider that the zhang family might have lent the ghost seal to king mu/king shang for appearance’s sake. and if all this did have to do with the zhang family and there really were only two people involved in the endgame of this story, it might also provide a tentative reason for xiaoge’s unease as he tries to parse through why there isn’t a third blood corpse in the seven star palace. it might have triggered a memory or some feeling in him that there was an explanation to all this that existed but that he wasn’t privy to in the moment, but perhaps he had been privy to it in the past, and perhaps he had come to find it many times before that he could no longer recall because it was a place tied to the zhang family in some capacity
that does however raise the question of why then had iron mask’s memoirs been circulating if he’d been a zhang, but then again, dissemination of information via tombs was a plan the zhang family had every reason to encourage and perpetuate if they hadn’t already been in the business of practicing it, so if iron mask was a zhang, he would have neither had any qualms about participating in it himself, nor of providing a revised version of the truth. after all, we have no indication that version 2 of the story as told by xiaoge is a truthful account either, especially since this version still doesn’t reveal a name for the iron-masked gentleman despite it coming from his supposed memoirs
in addition to that, we also get an interesting tidbit in hindsight from practically the very beginning of book 1, where wu sanxing takes note of the fox pattern on the warring states silkbook that started wu xie’s journey into the conspiracies and says that it depicts “the mask worn by the earliest people in the state of lu when they were offered up as sacrifices” and that it must mean that “someone with a very special identity” was buried in the tomb, possibly “more respected that the emperor” (Book 1, Ch.3, Temple of Seeds). it’s hard to say what to make of the notion that the fox-masked people were “sacrifices” considering the wang family’s story explicitly makes them out to be grave robbers, so either or both of them is a lie. however, it does at least confirme there is something special about these fox-masked people beyond what’s being said (especially given the green-eyed fox corpse, who following the zhang logic, might have been a lower ranked family member offered up as a sacrifice and who turned after death, but this is probably a stretch), and whoever is buried in that tomb is abnormally important. the only real issue you run into with this train of thought is considering how far back the zhang family tomb extends, why would any zhang of note not be buried in it, so that’s at least one gap in logic
all of this then leaves us with a final question: if we assume iron mask was a zhang, and that king shang of lu was in fact a false identity created by king mu of zhou for himself, then what exactly happened in the seven star palace, and who is who in what coffin?
we know that the seven star palace is a warring states period tomb constructed on top of a pre-existing western zhou dynasty tomb. there’s no indication of whether this pre-existing tomb was meant to be king mu’s (in which case it was at least partially a dupe as he was still alive), and raises the problem of king mu not having had the jade armor prior to the king shang of lu story as he was actively looking for it, so he can’t have found it in his own tomb. to me, this means there are two possibilities to consider:
possibility one: king mu had a tomb built for himself during his reign that was designed with his plan in mind, which might explain the presence of the snake cypress (which we again only ever see elsewhere in gutongjing in ancient ruins related to a candle dragon baby snake mine, so clearly it being in the seven star palace is of some significance). king mu and iron mask did find a jade burial armor, but in another tomb or elsewhere that isn’t what would become the seven star palace
possibility two: king mu and iron mask, with each other’s mutual knowledge and abilities, found a tomb containing a jade burial armor that happened to be a western zhou dynasty tomb. the story then roughly proceeds like in the first two versions, and king mu/shang removes the corpse from the jade armor and takes it for himself
in some ways i feel like the most logical and likely option is the first one, simply because the mechanisms inside the seven star palace are too precise and deliberate, namely the timer coffin that was tied to the box with the baby in it (which i won’t be getting into here because that’s for another meta). this then leaves us with the problem of determining exactly who is who in this tomb by the time wu xie walks into it. the wang family implies that king mu’s plan ultimately failed because he hadn’t considered that someone like wang zanghai would come about and have the ability to hijack king mu’s plan for his own purposes. you can interpret that either as referring to his grave robbing plan alone, or that it also refers to king mu himself successfully staying in the jade armor for as long as it would take for him to come out of it side effect free. the ambiguity of what the wang family meant by “plan” makes it difficult to decide whether, following that wording, it leaves room for king mu to have been dumped out of the jade burial armor or not, which doesn’t really make deciding who is who any easier. for the record, wu xie mentions later when he comes back to this story in ten years later that he believes the one buried in the coffin under the snake cypress was iron mask (and npss also states this in his timeline in the postscript of book 8). if we choose to believe this is correct, and that king shang of lu was in fact king mu of zhou, then it leaves two more possible outcomes to the story:
possibility one: the thing in the coffin at the entrance of the seven star palace is king mu of zhou, and he was also the blood zombie that xiaoge killed
possibility two: the thing in the coffin is king mu of zhou, but he didn’t turn into a blood zombie, rather into something different or more powerful, and therefore the blood zombie xiaoge killed was someone else
the only thing that makes me doubt in this theory that king mu of zhou could both have been the blood zombie xiaoge killed and whatever was in the coffin at the entrance to the seven star palace is that to start with, there was a coffin so elaborate there to begin with convenient enough to place someone in (unless there had actually initially been a sacrifice in it and that’s the body that got dumped in the ding cauldron on the side to get replaced), that if wu xie was correct in assuming xiaoge had been to the seven star palace before, he would have left a dangerous blood zombie that could roam around in it “alive”, and lastly, the fact that not only did xiaoge kowtow to it to ask for safe passage within the tomb, even after having killed the blood zombie, xiaoge insisted on respecting the time limit the thing in the coffin had set and pushed wu sanxing’s team to leave the seven star palace before dawn regardless. it’s worth noting that xiaoge has never kowtowed to a corpse outside of this occasion (to my knowledge at least), has only actually knelt in front of changbai mountain that houses the bronze gate really, and has only ever spoken to one other also incredibly old and likely powerful corpse that was very likely one of the first people to come out of the kunlun mountains, and that rests inside the meteorite in tamutuo (Restart Part I: The Sound of Providence, Ch. 222, Countdown to the Finale 4).
why adamantly continue to uphold the demands of a creature that you’ve killed and that can presumably no longer harm you? unless leaving before dawn was an imperative that went beyond the sole demands of the thing inside the coffin at the entrance, it’s a little strange. however, the problem with saying that whatever was in the coffin at the entrance to the seven star palace and the blood zombie that xiaoge killed are two different entities makes things difficult, because it would mean there was some third party involved somehow, and it gives possibility two (the one where king mu/shang and iron mask find another tomb to steal the jade burial armor from and co-opt it) a little more ground. i haven’t been able to find any conclusive information on where the real-life king mu of zhou was buried, and it’s hard to say how much of an argument a real-life fact holds for something like this, but it’s interesting to note that the western zhou dynasty’s capital was fenghao, located in what’s now part of present day xi’an in the province of shaanxi, and the province of shaanxi is roughly 800 km (or 500 miles) from the province of shandong where the seven star palace is. it’s relatively far, especially for the time period, so does the distance justify the thought that it might not have been king mu of zhou’s tomb that was used as the basis for the seven star palace after all? did king mu/shang and iron mask really find a tomb that contained a jade burial armor and co-opt it? more food for thought
either way, whether or not the blood zombie xiaoge killed was king mu of zhou, if we choose to follow both wu xie and npss, then it doesn’t change the fact that it’s very likely that regardless, king mu of zhou ended up in the coffin at the entrance of the seven star palace, and iron mask in the jade burial armor in the coffin beneath the snake cypress. in that case, it brings into question the motivations iron mask might have had for doing this if, following the current theory, he really was a member of the zhang family. surprisingly, it’s not too difficult to think of some plausible ones
the zhang family have been searching for a way to curb their own terrible longevity curse for centuries, to the extent their blind determination to find meaning in their existence is what proved to be the fatal weakness that drove them right into wang zanghai’s and the wang family’s trap. if he really was a zhang, why then would iron mask have been any different, especially since given the time period, knowledge of anything connected to either the queen mother of the west, or what her kingdom housed (re: the meteorite), or both would have likely still been fresh enough for zhang family members anyway. the promise of the jade burial armor could have been a tempting offer for a man himself doomed from birth. it��s also possible that while king mu of zhou’s grave robbing plan naturally aligned with what the zhang family had likely already been doing, and so in that sense they facilitated it, they drew the line at him potentially accessing longevity, as king mu of zhou remained an outsider and therefore an unknown variable in the long run. better then for one of their own to guard something like a jade burial armor than someone who while aware of the “truth”, wasn’t necessarily an ally, which is what ended up happening much later with wang zanghai. king mu would thus have been a liability to dispose of. and king mu/shang might have sensed this and tried to have all the people working with him killed like the first two versions of the king shang of lu story seem to suggest, and so iron mask really did fake his own death to ensure king mu couldn’t succeed
i realize this idea raises a number of other problems, such as again why the zhangs would not either have kept some knowledge that one of their own was buried not only outside of the family tomb (which had things dating back to the spring and autumn period, suggesting burial in it had already been an established tradition then), but also in something like a jade burial armor. maybe they did, and it’s one of those secrets only zhang qiling is privy to. only xiaoge would truly be able to answer that (not that he will). it’s also possible following this logic that if iron mask did fake his own death, doing so placed him outside the scope of the family enough he was free to act of his own selfish free will and seized the opportunity, but again, this is all speculation. it also raises the question of why the wang family, if they’d known there was a zhang buried in jade burial armor, wouldn’t have tampered with it and removed him, but then again, they likely needed to keep the corpse there to bring their plan against the zhang family to fruition regardless of who it was
for the sake of debate, i might as well also share an alternative theory to this, that while i feel has a lot more problems and ultimately doesn’t fit with a number of other elements of dmbj lore brought up here where the theory this “meta” has been about so far does, is still maybe worth mentioning. it’s essentially the reverse, that the iron-masked gentleman was king mu of zhou’s fabricated identity, and king shang of lu was a zhang. again, i feel like this spin on the theory has a lot of logic problems going on, but if i had to make a case for it:
殇 shang and 张 zhang are vaguely homonyms and both pronounced in the first tone, which while it’s likely a coincidence, lends this theory a tiny bit of substance given the zhang family is also associated with death both by nature and design
if king shang was a zhang, it could explain why he would have had access to the ghost seal, in which case it would have been iron mask who sought the zhang family out and then ultimately duped them
if iron mask was king mu, then his ability to spin a tall tale about himself to the ruler of the state of lu would have been much easier
if king shang was a zhang, then slaughtering any outsiders aware of the plan would have made sense to ensure knowledge would stay within the family
it would also mean that king shang the zhang was tossed out of the jade burial armor and presumably into the coffin at the entrance of the seven star palace while iron mask/king mu took his place, and was maybe duped by iron mask/king mu who faked his own death because the zhang family’s hubris has always been massive and he didn’t suspect he could be bested
this would fit with the interpretation that by saying only wang zanghai prevented king mu’s plan from succeeding, the wang family meant both his grave robbing plan and his ability to successfully attain longevity without side effects
this would have presumably also given iron mask/king mu the time to accomplish his “series of things” such as writing his “memoirs” onto a silkbook, constructing his own coffin duo together with the box that contained the unborn baby
that would mean that whatever was in the coffin at the entrance of the seven star palace was a zhang, which might explain why xiaoge would feel the need to kowtow to it when this is something he doesn’t usually do
again, as nice as this idea seems, it has a bunch of flaws to it, namely for example how that would then connect the fox-masked people and iron mask (unless you want to consider those were simply his own followers brought about by implementing his own plan), how king mu even in disguise could have had held a position at court without any suspicion and likely no familial backing as he’d faked his own death, and many more. so ultimately i feel like t’s not as solid of a theory, but it’s an interesting contrasting thought
as for who the queen mother of the west really was, that’s also up for debate and lot more difficult to determine. though li cu suggests even she might be a fabrication meant to embellish the story of king mu of zhou for the sake of luring people into believing immortality existed, we know enough by sand sea to be certain she did in fact exist. while it’s unclear whether she truly was the queen mother of the west of legend, i like to think she was simply because we have no other accounts of anyone with that name, and because of how deeply entrenched she was in things relating to “the truth of the world” that she was more or less implied to have been privy to. the theory i’m personally going with is that she discovered the meteorite in the qaidam basin and constructed a kingdom around it (which would have taken far longer than a lifetime to accomplish to the degree that she did), knowing full well what the meteorite represented and what it could do. and if she did know, then considering her knowledge of “the truth of this world”, and her supposed longevity, it’s not entirely impossible to consider, especially given the title of the book itself, that the queen mother of the west might be related to the ancestors of the zhang family mentioned in queen mother’s ghost banquet, and that she simply belonged to a different branch of those people who took a different direction than the zhang family did, and sought to remedy the curse in a different way. and what better way than to return to its source? after all, knowing the zhang family’s origins, it’s not impossible to suggest that not all of the people who emerged from beneath the kunlun mountains and among other things built the bronze gate all ended up congregating to form what would become the zhang family. we know, for example, that baima, xiaoge’s mother, also had special blood akin to the one running in the zhang family, enough that she passed it on to xiaoge, ironically granting him purer special blood than any other main family zhang by that point. so it’s not that far-fetched to think there may have been offshoots of the zhang family’s ancestors who chose to lead a different life and eventually drifted apart from their brethren enough that they lost knowledge of each other, or served a different purpose for whatever is controlling the zhang family like marionnettes on a string
so this has been a massive “meta” i still can’t believe i actually sat down and wrote this
hopefully it makes some kind of sense and isn’t just incoherent babbling i’m going to be honest that’s still what it is lbr and i’m not sure it’s contributed much to anything besides being one more rabbit hole crack theory, but uhhh if you’ve stuck out this long thank you for reading! and feel free to comment or add anything onto this i’m always happy to talk about dmbj lore please talk to me about dmbj lore
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makima-s-most-smile · 9 months
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Trigun Ultimate 2 (Part 4)
Will this volume ever end? Why do I have so much to say?
OOOOooOOooooh, it is woowootime. Nyehehehehehehe *continues to say even more about its favourite character!*
Chapter 6: A gathering of demons
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Oh, I love how nightow portrays the vastness of the desert. How much is an ile? How big is this planet? Is it earthlike? With no oceans and all... are the cities splayed out? I am European and live in a big city conglomerate. In two hours, I can switch countries and visit like 20 different cities. This picture reminds me of the "Wild West". I remember American friends being shocked at how connected everything is and how we Europeans see distance. For them a 4-12 hour drive is totally normal and you are still in the same state. I can only imagine that No-Man's-Land is even worse than that.
But what does that entail? Is travel between cities something regular or something you only do if you try and get work or flee from something? There is the big trade between the cities, but those have to be the outliers. Sandstreamers being something like trains. I imagine that they are mostly used for commerce, then. Transporting people has to be a lesser side hustle.
But how long does the journey with a bus between the cities take? I'd say days with the thoughts I just had.
I leave the Wolfwood introduction panel out, because of the limitations for pictures, but damn, it is good. It also took me too long to realise that this was not fabricated, but that Wolfwood literally had a bike mishap. His whole interaction with Vash reads differently for me when I take this into consideration.
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Three things. 1. what I like about Wolfwood’s design is that if you don’t take the tit window and the facial scruff into consideration, he is dressed like a typical Japanese salary man! A nobody, one of many. Black short hair with suit, he could be a 0815 background character/random casualty in nearly any anime/manga. But here, he falls out of the line. All in black in the desert heat, that is suicide! He is not dressed like the others in typical western clothes. He’s an outlier from the start but at the same time a very usual sight for us readers!
2. I love how silly and welcoming he is. He is just a very charming random dude. We next to never see him interact with random people after this, so we miss this side of him in the later volumes. But he easily fits in and connects, even as a weird outlier. He is an idiot, but an idiot with street smarts.
3. Maybe because I am not a native English speaker, but I stumbled more than once over the word “tradesman” as a colloquial term for assassin. Kinda a roundabout way to say, hey, if you’re interested in me, I may provide you with more information and maybe I have the kind of skill you’re looking for. Tradesman basically means person with a specific skill, so not elaborating on that, but letting people mock him always reads for me as Wolfwood playing with being caught/putting his “profession” down/offering work. That he has a good eye is shown on the next page with him immediately realising who Vash is (at least he know the bounty pics and knows how to look. Wolfwood is not faceblind!)
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Without the context of Milly being especially perceptive, this always read for me as Vash being absolutely annoyed by Wolfwood and being distrusting, when in reality he seems to be already warming up to him. Like with us readers, Wolfwood has wormed himself into his heart already. Who could deny Wolfy?
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“‘Bout time I left, anyway.” Rings differently when you know him more. Wolfwood is a person that has his foot already out of the door to be not a burden to anyone nice. And we learn that in his introduction.
Wolfwood looks so damn fucking young there. I always have big problems in discerning ages in Manga. But even with his scruff, Wolfwood looks barely out of his teens.
When I think about the different WooWoo-versions, I always deck '98 as the oldest in his mid to end thirties, Ultimate barely 20, Trimax 30 max and Stampede... Sorry, StampWolfwood, you are still in your teens for me. You are baby.
I always remembered Wolfwood as a liar by omission, but damn, he is doing everything but spelling stuff out.  “Not exactly just that…” Damn, and he looks so pained. Vash surely zoomed in on it. I now believe, the only reason why we know stuff so late about Wolfwood is because Vash never asked or tried to pin Wolfwood down.
The following pages is Wolfwood sharing his money with the orphans and I love it. We get to know Wolfwood as a very perceptive, benevolent and honest guy, who seems to be desperately begging for people to see him, to ask more about him. As much as he is funny, we also see someone who sees himself as a burden and who is burdened by a big responsibility and who still shares and gives as much as he can. No wonder Vash smiled with such earnesty. Wolfwood is the personification of what makes him still have hope in humanity.
Chapter 7: The demon’s eye
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You know him just for this little bus drive and you already trust him with that info, Vash. Wolfwood is part of the team now, wether they realised it or not. Like I said in the chapter before, the journey must take longer, so they may have had a few days to bond.
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He knows what happened. We learn in the next chapter why Wolfwood is there. It is easy to put two and two together for him.
Or regrets that they have to part ways and Wolfwood has to go back to being the Punisher. He had a short dance with Lady Death and then a little vacation where he could be human.
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As much as we learn that Wolfwood hates his predicament, it is his duty. There is a reason why he does what he does.
It is kinda sad that Wolfwood left immediately. Nightow, most likely, had other stuff planned, but the cancellation of the magazine kinda threw a wrench into it. I kinda like how '98 did it with Vash and Wolfwood having their own little adventure on the journey.
Funny observation. People are there, because there is gunshots. Not children’s laughs or anything, it is gunshots that show that people are there. What a shitty world they live in.
08: The fifth moon
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Did Legato control the corpses? Or did he “take in” the survivors and used experiments on them? Nicholas knows his bounties. Without him, I wouldn't peg them as the Slavers.
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First of all, the hint/info that Vash and Knifes are both not human. A man between a rock and a hard place. A well-prepared dead man, but a dead man either way.
Since we as a reader already have a bond with Wolfwood, he is our point of reference for a "normal" human reaction to the shit that goes down. Nightow regularly flashes back to Wolfwood's reaction to it all. Either so we don't forget that he is part of the EVUL or to bring down that point how fucked up Knives is (especially with the SA-symbolism). People with uteri will agree either way that the scene with the sister being that pregnant and Knives bursting out is… massive body horror.
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At least both legs and one arm are smashed, pelvis most likely, too, his head is squished into his torso, neck broken? and I have no idea how else he is crumbled up. Paper doll Legato
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Vash didn’t only shoot himself to regain control. He shot Knives, too! He shot Knives to get free, but it was already too late.
While someone else (I am sorry, I am bad with names D; If I find you again, I will link your post) has put it brilliantly how Knives taking control over Vash can be read as assault, there is something else I’d like to point out.
Knives is the only person in the whole story who has been able to take control from Vash. We have seen him fight so many people, like Neon, Monev and others, but Vash never was not in control. He put rules upon himself that constricted him, e.g. the pacifism, but those constrictions were by his own decision. Vash takes into consideration that he may die, but it is by his own free will and as we have seen, he is a bit suicidal. Likewike, Vash gives people all the agency, all his agency. He mostly reacts to their decisions towards him. Knives is the only person in the whole world who is able to take away Vash’s agency and he uses that power over him. Not going into powerscaling or such a thing, but it shows what a powerful player Knives is.
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Again, Wolfwood is our focus point for human reaction. Dude is scared out of his mind and mixing both brothers. Messengers of God coming to cast down judgement on us? That would be Knives, not Vash. But he demands an answer from Vash, with whom he already formed a connection. Wolfwood may feel even somewhat betrayed, as hypocritical as that is.
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corviids · 10 months
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hi birdie! just saw your post about impostor syndrome hitting you and i just wanted to remind you what an excellent artist and writer you are. i know it's difficult to think so when impostor syndrome is at its highest, but i do hope this brings some comfort anyways! <3
as a writer, i cannot being to explain why your writings are out of this world, insane, crazy, wonderful. whatever emotion you try to go for, you achieve it in a way that it just clings to the reader's mind and carves a place in our bones. your dialogues, your world-building, the details, the characterisation, the sadness, the joy, the despair, the love, the yearning, the rage, the passion…. i've cried reading your writings, because they hit so hard in my heart that i just cannot stay quiet about it. and i have devoured your smut, and i have laughed with the lucemond kids' shenanigans. you have a way with words, you are so unique. i consume every single piece you publish, and i would consume any book of your own if you published, too. you were one of the first writers i read and followed when i came to this fandom and i just hope i can keep supporting you in anything you do.
as an artist, your talent knows no limits. that magic you have putting emotions into words, well, you also have it when you draw the faces of your characters. it's like looking at them in the eye, their smiles and the twitches and tilts you capture so well, and it feels like i'm looking at a real person with real emotions. i'm in love with your style, from the sketch to the colouring to the way i can see any of your art out of context and know it's yours. you have magic in your fingers, and daily dust in your soul and in your mind, and that's why every single piece you draw and you write is a treasure to be kept and protected, love and cherished.
personally, i know we haven't talked much, but you have been so kind to me. and i just love your sense of humor, your commitment, the way you treat with such respect and love your readers. how you give your heart to answer to our asks and questions just as you give it to create content.
we're very lucky to have you in this fandom, a nd i will always be grateful for every single thing that you have given us that has made me fell even more in love with lucerys, with aemond, with lucemond. with this site and with the culture of fan creating and providing.
you're a star, and i just hope i can continue to see how much you achieve as time goes by! we have your back! you don't know how much your writings and your art mean to people, and i know because i'm one of those and i have friends with whom i talked about your creations! you made hundreds of people from different places in the world to fall in love with what you do! i would say that's such a pretty neat job! <3 <3 <3
hope you feel better soon! i'm here if you ever need to talk! sending you the biggest hug and the best of vibes!!!!!! <3 <3 <3
i’ve waited a couple days to answer this because i’m genuinely speechless. i don’t cry very easily for reasons but reading this, especially after such a hard day, made me tear up. there really aren’t words to convey how grateful i am for everyone here that has supported my works. lucemond and this little community we have built have really became a safe space for me to ramble and share my stuff without fear.
i’m eternally grateful for every single person that send me asks, comments, or just comes round to check my stuff out. this is one of, if not the kindest things i’ve ever received and i hope that i can continue to make y’all as happy as you all make me <333
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maddie-grove · 2 years
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Apologies if this is not your area of law, but how would you rewrite Legally Blonde to be more legally accurate?
The most glaring inaccuracy of the movie is that Elle is allowed to represent a client as a 1L. As a 3L, she could represent a client with the supervision of a licensed attorney (i.e., Luke Wilson’s character), but not in her first year. If I wanted to make the movie legally accurate, I would make the “Elle gets her shit together” montage cover a longer period of time, then do a time skip. This would also take care of the fact that she never seems to take exams or think about doing a journal/moot court. Because it’s a longer period of time, I’d show her making some friends (not including Vivian—that has to wait until the internship).
The second set of inaccuracies revolves around the trial; chiefly, Callahan fucks up so badly at uncovering facts before trial that, realistically, the rest of the movie should be about Brooke Windham persuading the court that he’s provided ineffective assistance of counsel and unraveling that whole mess so she can get a retrial. It’s one thing not to know about perms and engage an expert witness on hair care to expose Chutney’s lies. It’s quite another to fail to dig up the most rudimentary info on a guy who claims to be sleeping with your client. (He brings his boyfriend to the trial! A boyfriend who apparently wasn’t told and couldn’t pick up from context clues that his lover was lying about sleeping with a woman for what seems to be financial gain! Stereotypes aside, it couldn’t have been hard to figure out that he was gay!) I think the best way to address this issue is to have the action take place during the discovery phase. This would take care of the smaller trial inaccuracies and free Elle from most evidentiary concerns. It wouldn’t be as dramatic as a trial, and you’d have to find some other way for Chutney to make a public confession. An evidentiary hearing?
Lastly, I don’t buy that Warner would graduate without a job offer. He’s shown to be a mediocre but well-connected and ambitious law student; if his dad could pull strings to get him into Harvard and Warner actually managed to graduate, his dad would surely be able to get him a job at a golf buddy’s firm. Warner would have to be wildly incompetent, be personally hellish to work with, or just have not applied for any jobs for that to happen (probably at least two out of three). I get that he has to suffer for his heartlessness and unearned smugness, and it tracked for me when I was eleven, but as an adult lawyer, I’m just morbidly curious. Did he personally call every job lead and call them the c-word? Did he nobly go into public interest (public interest jobs usually won’t hire you until you pass the bar)? Did his dad tell people NOT to hire him, because unbeknownst to Warner he has a rare condition where he’ll die if he attends an arbitration? Questions abound.
Really, though, I like the balance that the movie strikes between telling an exciting story and portraying some of the realities of law school and legal practice. For example: the scenario where the real murderer confesses on the witness stand is basically a Hollywood fantasy, but I like how it’s set up as Elle poking holes in Chutney’s story about not hearing the gunshot. The point of cross-examination is to establish in front of the jury that the witness isn’t credible, or that her testimony doesn’t actually support what the prosecution is trying to prove. Callahan’s failures as a lawyer are also a nice illustration of how the attorney/client relationship can break down when the attorney doesn’t respect the client’s goals, dislikes her due to his biases, and is too arrogant to recognize his limitations. Law school really can be a snotty environment; I didn’t even go to a T14, but some people would look down on others for petty shit (like not having attorneys for parents) as well as out of sexism, racism, etc. The professors at my school weren’t that harsh when it came to cold-calling (some had a strict demeanor but asked relatively easy questions, some asked hard questions but were nice about it, some would only cold-call on pre-determined/assigned days, and some never cold-called), but I think law professors in general have become nicer in this regard, either because they didn’t enjoy being humiliated when they were in law school, or because they’re thinking “ugh it would be so cringe if I did that, do I think I’m in the fucking Paper Chase?”
Also, I used to think it was weird that Elle and Vivian live in a dorm. The only students who lived in campus housing at my school were the ones doing a semester abroad, and those dorms weren’t hall-style. But it turns out Harvard Law has dorms!
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no-where-new-hero · 9 months
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Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross: A Review
I tend not to give less than 3/5 stars to any book I finish, mostly because I know what I'll like in time to DNF, and if it's truly that disappointing when I'm done, well, at least it got me to the end (the exception to this is The Maidens by Alex Michaelides, but that's the subject of another rant).
This book, however, only scored a 2/5 and the only reason I finished it was that it made me so annoyed, I needed to know entirely whereof I spoke before posting this review. ~900 word rant below the cut and thanks to @blackcatwalking for commiserating with me in my outrage through the process 😅
I came into this book with high expectations based on the vibes and setting, but unfortunately a book can’t live on vibes and atmosphere alone, and the whole novel felt so flimsy, an ephemerality the author appeared to hand-wave away through an insipid romance and rather horrifying purple prose.
Now, I should be the last person to complain about purple prose. I accept that as one of my own literary failings. I am not, however, a NYT bestselling author. I don’t have an agent, an editor, a line editor, anyone else double checking my style. Ross does. And say what you want about word choice, but the use of “inspiration” rather than “inhalation” jarred (in a particularly uninspiring moment), and an army captain saying “expire” rather than “die” when speaking protectively of his soldiers is just laughable. They are not cereal boxes. When I got to the third use of “raiment” to describe perfectly ordinary and utilitarian clothes, I hit my limit.
The prose wouldn’t have bothered me so much if these dictionary words were part of Iris and Roman’s dialogue or letter-writing (see more below), considering they’re both wordsmiths and are supposed to have such a sparkling, dynamic writing style (this is hard to appreciate, as Ross herself is neither sparkling nor dynamic). But the narration merely came across as pretentious, without even pretention’s usual snobbish success.
The letter-writing itself also failed to distinguish the book, as neither Iris nor Roman had a distinct voice, and the central mystery of who is replying to Iris is spoiled for the reader at about chapter five. I am aware that knowing who he is serves the rivals to lovers trope, but it leeches absolutely all tension out of the plot. The rivals to lovers trope itself expires (haha) at the end of part 1 (and at the end of all good pacing in the novel), and nothing remains except a lot of soppy sexual attraction to draw these two together. I am aware this is a YA novel, but in the year 2023, insta-love should be a red flag to any editor.
All this aside, my largest complaint lay in the world-building/setting, considering I was cheated out of the WWI fantasy AU I was sold and was left with a very poor secondary world fantasy instead. I will admit (this is about my one point of charity in the whole book) that the all-of-two chapters where Iris actually interacts with a battle at the front feels grounded, brings home the grimy messiness of war, and drives a good pace. Unfortunately, it comes far too late and explains far too little to rehabilitate the rest. Briefly, there is a war between two gods. Other than a schematic mythology explaining why these gods are at war, we get absolutely ZERO context for why humans would be drawn into it. Any story about war, fantasy or otherwise (and especially fantasy), requires its stakes to involve the characters in soul-crushing conflict, and Ross never provides any: not patriotism, a desire for social change, a campaign of othering, a greed for land or power, or even religion, which would seem like an easy go-to if gods are involved. As far as I could tell, nothing would change, no matter which side won. If this was meant to be a commentary on the meaningless of war or echo the false and outdated loyalties that drew Europe into WWI, I found no evidence for it. No musings in Iris or Roman about how they and their families got caught up in this struggle. Not even the usual alarming hopes of what they’d get out of it at the end of it.
I think this whole concept of war-as-set-dressing really irked me, too, because of how the book ended. I had my gripes beforehand, but the epilogue clearly indicates that the sequel will involve the gods directly. I might be inclined to care more if we got even the barest glimpse in this book of how the gods are operating in the war. I realized from reading this how much of tension and the desire to know what happens next in a reader derives from fear of what will happen, and the forces at play around Iris and Roman appeared so anodyne that I can no longer be obliged to care.
My early thoughts from about halfway through was that it should have been written for an adult audience, but now that I finished it, I don’t want to give Ross a free pass on account of it’s being YA. We have all been traumatized by our fair amount of children’s books, for goodness sake. There’s no need to sugarcoat war or its fallout, how it impacts people's lives beyond separation from loved ones and possibility of death, ESPECIALLY if you are basing things on WWI.
“It’s just a romantic little story!” You might say. “It doesn’t have to be that deep!” Fine. I clearly seem to be in the minority in my reaction to the book. Plenty of people thought it was show-stopping and spectacular, and I won’t invalidate those opinions (though I may wonder what you read as typical fare). But I don’t know if anything else will top this as my worst read of the year.
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st0rmyskies · 1 year
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I’m new to the LU fandom, I really love the series but I’m kinda confused about the whole link/link shippings. It’s not something I have a real issue with as long as the links in question aren’t related by blood or anything, but I’m really confused how the ships came to be????
Wildlight especially because yes, there’s definitely chemistry and a deep bond between them, but I’ve never thought about their relationship going beyond that and into sexual????
I always kinda felt like they’d be queer-platonic, like, they’re so close their relationship can’t be defined as purely platonic but it’s not sexual. There’s a lot of love and affection but it doesn’t fall neatly into romantic either?
They’re just. Two people who really care about each other and want to enjoy their time together while it lasts to the fullest and just. Experience life with the other by their side.
Mostly I just feel really confused and like I’m lacking a lot of information. I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense or seems rude, I just don’t understand in general, and thought maybe you could provide some insight???
So I, for example, don't like mango. Some people love mango but and think apples are boring, and I would clutch my pearls about that and go on a 40 minute tirade about how apples are the shit. The same can be said for shipping. When it comes to ships, both with regard to types of ships and pairings, a lot of it comes down to personal preference. It's as simple as that.
That's the main idea here, anon. There's not any information you're missing. The rest is under the cut for specifics about Wildlight and other Linkships.
No matter how you ship Wild and Twilight, with even the various flavors of queerplatonic or simple friendship being considered "shipping" of sorts for the purposes of this conversation, as you said: it's obvious that the two of them have chemistry. They have history together. They look to one another when Time says cryptic shit like two siblings wondering if that lore drop from dad was true or not. Twilight scolds Wild for getting himself injured in defense of Wind and Wild doesn't hesitate to give it back to him a bit. In the most recent arc, while everyone on the team is affected by Twilight's injury in one way or another, Wild is the one who loses his mind a bit over the whole thing. Their bond runs deep.
Like you, there is a huge group of fans who look at that relationship and enjoy that flavor of queerplatonic rep. They choose to ship Wild and Twilight in that way, and that's cool. But some of us look at the same relationship and prefer to explore the spicier side of things under the same context, and that's cool too. There was recently a text post I reblogged that went something long the lines of fic writers "using preestablished relationships to give sex [in their works] emotional context." Without having to write thousands of words of backstory to get two people together, sometimes we as fic writers lean on the source material to establish the soft stuff so we can get right into the more hardcore fare. It's a fun little thought experiment to consider how two characters like Twi and Wild who have such obvious caring for one another in canon might engage with one another behind the scenes.
The same can be said for characters who don't seem to have a whole ton of on-screen chemistry, as it were. Sky is very obviously in love with his Zelda, and that's part of the reason why he was the focus of the poly!Sky series. Because yes, SS Zelink is adorable, but what if Sky wasn't limited to that relationship alone? How would his relationships look like with Twilight, with Warriors, with Time? For me, it's a fun exploration and skill-development exercise to write believable romantic and/or sexual relationships that you wouldn't expect in-universe, especially since they firmly aren't established in the source material.
I, for one, also enjoy exploring both healthy and unhealthy sexual relationships through fiction. By far, my favorite kind of couple to write has to be the train wreck: those who bring out the worst in one another and have incendiary chemistry in the bedroom. HSH WarrTime falls into this category, and Twilight/Dark does too in a different sense. It's that journey from "Omg this would NEVER work" to "Dark has one person and one person only he will behave for" that never fails to hook me.
In the end, it boils down to the same reason why most restaurants have such a diverse menu. Some people prefer one flavor of cooked-up relationships, others may prefer another. Some of us change tastes depending on the day. And maybe in relationships that you personally don't see romance or a sexual connection, to someone else it looks plain as day.
And that's all totally okay.
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babblingflowers · 1 year
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An unnecessarily long rumination on ATYD and the nature of prequels
So as I was working my way through All The Young Dudes, I stared to think about the nature of prequels, and I think ATYD provides a really good example to examine how the transformative nature (and a very specific kind of transformation) of prequels fundamentally alters and impacts a story.
In some ways, this is absolutely a benefit to the story. The nature of prequels means that both audience and author know where the story is going to end, even if they don’t know the exact details of how its going to get there. And I think this can provide for some really fun moments, but also can work as a literary tool to control tone, making scenes read as sad, or happy, or melancholy, when they wouldn’t seem so otherwise to an audience that didn’t know the future.
For example, Remus thinking about how spoiled Harry will be doesn’t seem sad in an isolated context, but when you know that everyone is going to fucking die and Harry’s going to grow up in an abusive household locked in a closet, it changes the tone.
Especially when dealing with a property like Harry Potter, which is in equal measure, so beloved and also heavily criticized, the experience of reading a well done prequel can bring a lot of catharsis to readers, it allows us to comment on the events of a story in ways that seem innocuous out of context, but in practice, serve as commentary on how we feel about the events to come (the multiple jokes about Tonks being too young for Remus comes to mind).
But for all that prequels add, there is a huge element of limitation to them. Stories don’t always end the way we think they will, they’re living, they change and grow, sometimes in unexpected ways as they come to life. But in the particular case of prequels, stores are bound by their fate. Anakin is always going to turn to the dark side, he doesn’t have a choice. And it doesn’t matter how you write his story or his character, he will always do that, even if doing so betrays the integrity of the character you’ve created for him, or it no longer makes sense within the narrative, Anakin always becomes Darth Vader, Peter always betrays James, and Sirius always goes to prison.
I remember this fic I read a while back that takes place during a time skip, and it said it was canon compliant, but then as I got to the end of the story I started thinking, “there’s no way that this can end the way its supposed to, it would make the events (of the original story) too sad, too tragic” and in the end, I was right, the author decided to throw caution to the wind and change the canon ending. But of course, what the story gained in narrative satisfaction, it lost in canon compliance, it was no longer a tale that fit in with the original narrative.
And so back to ATYD, as I got to the back half of the story, and the story starts moving through the familiar plot points, after 300 thousand or so words spent creating a story for these characters, I started asking myself “is this really what this story is meant to be about?” “Is this how it should go? Or would it have been better off plunging away from the rules of canon?” The details of Sirius’s canon imprisonment are already shody at best, with there being no trail, but it becomes even harder to believe when you add in the context of the entire ATYD story, it becomes even stranger. Grant becomes a character who has to exist because its unthinkable that Remus would have made it though that on his own (as we’re meant to assume in canon) It makes the story more tragic, which is perhaps a good thing, is perhaps the point: giving weight to the absolute horror that was the first war, really highlighting how terrible those events were.
The fact of the matter is that the canon events of Harry Potter rest over ATYD like a dark cloud. Even when they’re all just kids pulling pranks and throwing birthday parties and going camping, it sits in the back of your mind because you know all these people are going to fucking die in horrible, tragic deaths. Which might make it one of the best fictional war stories of all time. Like if someone had told you at the beginning of the Hunger Games: Prim dies anyway.
Perhaps the sense that this isn’t how the story is supposed to go is the point. Taking people’s lives and forcing them into something they are not, taking children and turning them into fighters, taking heroes and turning them into corpses, taking love stories and turning them into tragedies, that’s what war is. It’s no small kindness that the story ends where it does, leaving us with some small grace, even though we know how it ends anyway.
But I couldn’t help but asking myself, are these stories, the one about a group of school boys finding friendship and love, and queer acceptance, and found family, and the story about a bunch of teenagers that are trying to stop a genocidal dictator, and who’s relationships fall apart in the depths of war and espionage, and who all die in the end, are they supposed to be the same story? And I’m still not sure. I don’t know if ATYD being adherent to the narrative of another, less good, sad story, makes it better or worse, but I know it had a fundamental impact on the fabric of the story, and how that story made us feel. And if it had just been a random story about magical school boys who all live (or a space wizard who was tempted by darkness, but eventually returned home to his wife and twin babies and had a long, happy life) I don’t know if we would have cared as much.
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girl4music · 5 months
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REPRESENTATION ANXIETY AND WHY IT’S BAD FOR ACTUALLY PROVIDING REPRESENTATION / WHAT CONSTITUTES AS REAL REPRESENTATION / WHY ITS IMPORTANT IN TV ART/ENTERTAINMENT
Ever heard of the phrase “representation anxiety” when it comes to TV art/entertainment? No, I haven’t just made it up: it’s a real thing/a real concept. It’s something that’s only come up recently actually. See representation - especially when it comes to sexuality/identity/gender - is all over the place now. Therefore it’s nowhere near as restricted/limited as it used to be when writing and producing TV art/entertainment. And so representation is often made a “quota” in the TV art/entertainment landscape now. Creators are encouraged and expected to include it somewhere - usually for selfish reasons - a means of getting more or better ratings (i.e. making more money/gaining more power/success/fame) by the studios, networks or streaming services/companies. It’s a literal quota to meet as if in the business of sales - because technically it is about sales. And so there is an anxiety surrounding providing that representation and meeting that quota of representation by creators in TV art/entertainment. And this anxiety is a pressure and when pressure is involved in creating art/entertainment, things go wrong very quickly out of sloppiness, carelessness, laziness, ignorance. The anxiety is so strong that there is a loss of focus.
Now anybody that suffers with anxiety knows why this is. It’s because you’re so focused on and worrying about and overthinking what makes you anxious that you lose sight of everything else that’s important. In context of creating art/entertainment this means the quality of your writing/producing starts to decline because you neglect the storytelling aspect to focus entirely on the representation aspect - and so representation now becomes something you’re forcing and contriving into your art/entertainment rather than letting it flow and ebb naturally and organically. Plot and character narrative/theme or arc takes second place to making sure you show that gay/queer couple doing gay/queer things as much as possible without a foundation for why or how. Whether it makes sense, is logical, feels realistic or even is at the right place and time for it. All that takes a backseat. All the detail, all the nuance, all the substance just gets sucked out completely in favour of meeting that fucking quota you’re pressured to meet by the higher-ups at the studio/network/company who could not give a shit about your work - what it provides, what it teaches - when or where. They’re not gonna watch it. Executives very rarely ever watch the media they greenlight for production unless they absolutely have to because it’s failing so they can sus out why they believe it might be failing. It’s not for any kind of genuine support or help or in solidarity for your passions, your ambitions, your heart. They don’t care about any of that unfortunately. Creative ideas and decisions don’t matter to them unless those creative ideas and decisions make bank. So you’re not doing yourself or anyone else that cares any favours by forcing and contriving representation. By being so anxious about it that you’ve lost your focus. I get it. It’s not easy when it’s a major project. When there’s people watching you do what you do. But the thing is is representation is not proper or genuine representation if it’s just put in there for the sake of it. When there’s no rhyme or reason behind it. And I’ve watched a lot of TV art/entertainment where this is unfortunately the case. Where I can tell that it’s just a quota to meet and isn’t giving me anything substantial or real. I almost immediately pick that up. Sometimes it’s in a really selfish way like with queerbaiting - which by the way - you can queerbait a canon textual couple just as much as you can non-canon subtextual ones because if your couple is not proper/genuine gay/queer representation anyway… then it’s going to come across very queerbait-y because of all the forced sexual intimacy and then no context behind why or how it happens - no communication between the characters - no aftermath, no set up, no emotional connection, no chemistry - no realism or depth. It’s going to seem like an act - which obviously it is - but your viewers aren’t supposed to think or feel that way. It’s supposed to be convincing, it’s supposed to be well written and performed to the point where it looks and feels real. That’s when representation really works. When the viewers watching are fully immersed or engaged in what’s happening on the screen that they feel things. That’s guaranteed not to happen when it’s forced in.
Here’s the deal. Communication and connection. If you can show this happening between the characters both when it’s in a sexual context and when it’s not - then you’ve got something substantial with which to build on. The main problem with forced or contrived representation is that there is no foundation for it. It just comes out of nowhere. It just happens randomly. There’s no slow burn or anything even remotely close to any genuine connection or attraction or love between the characters that you force into a romantic/sexual relationship. It lacks everything that makes it stand up and holds it up. It lacks foundation.
I personally tend to gravitate towards slow burn and friends-to-lovers or even enemies-to-lovers situations and tropes in TV art/entertainment because there is rich history there between the characters where it actually seems probable and even appropriate for them to develop into romance. You can see and feel the chemistry radiating off of them, the intensity, the longing, the passion - in more than just a sexual way. There’s deep emotions and feelings there that drive the attraction the characters have for one another. I very rarely see that anymore in TV art/entertainment. And I understand the reason why this is - it’s time constraints mostly and it’s not the fault of creators. But that doesn’t make it any easier for me to watch it. I can’t justify watching, supporting and shipping a couple or a relationship just out of time constraints because that makes me feel fake and obligatory and yeah - that’s not something I wish to feel in watching TV art/entertainment. I want my experience to be genuine and real just as much as I want the characters and their relationship to be genuine and real. I’ll be honest - I don’t watch pure romance or love stories because if that’s the only thing that piece of art/entertainment is for or about - it does feel very fake. My niche is action/fantasy/drama because there’s more going on with the individual characters - they have individual stories, arcs, developments and those don’t take away from the romance or love story. Actually,… it tends to help it and cultivate it because if the individual characters feel real and fleshed out, probably, very likely, the relationship also will too because all of the individual detail informs the coupling detail. You see? This gives it foundation.
Xena and Gabrielle are my most favourite gay/queer relationship of all-time despite them not even being textually canon - as in they were never confirmed as canon lovers or a canon couple in the TV show itself. They actually couldn’t be. I’ve gone into the reasons why this is many times before so I won’t talk about it in this post. Anyway, there is a reason why they are and still remain my favourite and honestly the best representation of any romance or love story - gay/queer or otherwise - that I’ve ever since in TV art/entertainment. The reason why is because they’re main characters that have a lot of focus on their individual representation and development each and all of that builds incredibly solid foundation for what becomes their “non-canon” romance and love story. And in every way where it actually matters,… it is what a depiction of a romance or love story should be. This TV show is action/fantasy/drama with some comedy thrown in here and there. It’s truly the most insane, farcical, campy shit ever - but THEY FEEL REAL. They communicate, they emotionally connect, they declare their love, they kiss, they get married, they behave as domestic, they have a baby… Even though they’re not confirmed as a main-textual canon couple in it, they are exactly what representation for romantic/sexual relationships should be in TV art/entertainment today! And because IT’S NOT… that’s why it is still THE BEST. Them being my favourite is a subjective obviously, but yeah, they are genuinely objectively the best representation there is in TV art/entertainment because they’re a same-sex main protagonist couple. Both of them. Not one a main character and the other a supporting/recurring character. Both of them are THE ONLY main protagonists all throughout the entirety of the show. 6 SEASONS length of a show. And their romance/love story is a major storyline. It’s not a textually canon romance/love story, but it plays out exactly like one regardless of the “non-canonity”. So it doesn’t matter. It does not matter whatsoever. Now here’s the problem with watching this show in this day and age where representation is expected. It can come across as queerbaiting that there is so much ‘will they-won’t they’ subtext. I hate queerbaiting with a searing passion. I think it’s the worst thing that we have to put up with in TV art/entertainment in a queer narrative. So trust me when I say that what it may initially look like you - it isn’t. Again, I’ve explained why many times before so I’m not gonna go into it here. But give this show a chance. Seriously, give it a chance. It is an EPIC love story.
I’ll leave this post off by saying that representation anxiety is awful and I do understand the pressure but I cannot support representation that’s forced and contrived. Not when I’ve had a life-changing experience where I’ve gotten so much better and where I know what real representation looks/feels like.
This is not an order. It’s a request.
Do better because representation anxiety is ruining what should be amazing influential art/entertainment that people can really learn from and be inspired by every day that they watch/interact with/engage in your creation be it in whatever format - but it’s especially important in a television/visual format because people look into it and see themselves in it. They would get a sense who they are and what their purpose is through watching this TV show or movie or video with characters that can mean so much to them that have a relationship between them that can be seen or interpreted as a romantic/sexual love story and you have to provide the foundation and honesty and the substance for it to be real representation. Meeting a quota is not worth it and it’s not enough.
If you want to know what you should be aiming for and attempting to achieve instead… it’s actually this:
youtube
youtube
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gothicakvtagawa · 1 year
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ooh!! have you read any more danmei or even just wuxia works? if so may i be so bold as to ask you for little rec crumbs for i am just a starving little pigeon eager for any more content pls T.T
even outside of mxtx there really is quite a limit to how far you can venture out to danmei or even just the wuxia world in general :( we have priest and meatbun whose content has started to be more accessable thankfully but outside of that, unless you can read mandarin it's gonna be a little difficult to find something new
okay it’s not wuxia and it’s not danmei either but daomu biji (the grave robber’s chronicles) is a really, REALLY fascinating book series that has been adapted into the lost tomb series of shows/movies and i. i really do love that series so much. i started with the sound of the providence after watching guardian (zhu yilong plays wu xie, i personally love him and i’m not like 100% in disgust at his interpretation but the show itself is… well… not the best adaptation in the lineup), but there’s sooooo much content and i think a tencent donghua if you have access to those. i believe the book series does have an official translation but don’t quote me on it, and that iqiyi and viki together have all the shows and movies (time raiders is free on youtube, it’s complete nonsense but it’s also just so much fun)
like i said, it’s not danmei but the major pairing in fanon is pingxie, ie. main character and disaster darling wu xie + ageless stoic supernatural and occasionally amnesiac badass zhang qiling aka xiao-ge (idk how to explain xiao-ge, he really is just… he’s really inexplicable to me). it’s not canon but they definitely have a canonical “he is my north star/my anchor to this earth” sorta deal and regardless of how you choose to interpret that, it’s a really sweet and really intimate relationship and the iron triangle dynamic in general is just wonderful. the last interview i saw with the author of the novels and some of the actors were all so so respectful of the fans that headcanon the iron triangle in various romantic/platonic configurations, which i personally found to be rare in ANY context and really just. really admirable and wonderful.
and of course for danmei that i personally can recommend, there’s priest’s zhen hun, which was adapted into the really really weird and just horrendously cgi’d but simultaneously agonising and heartbreaking guardian. it’s a modern supernatural/magical realism detective novel + love story between an immensely powerful ghost and a human detective (to sum up the novel really really poorly and broadly). i read this several years ago now so i’m looking forward to returning to it and maybe understanding it a little better
to be 100% honest, i only recently got back into danmei because of scum villain, so im also on the hunt for recs in the danmei and xianxia/wuxia genres! access has historically been an issue for me, which is why i’m so grateful now for the official releases. but i do deeply appreciate the opportunity to suggest dmbj, because i really did thoroughly enjoy that series
however i’ve heard some pretty good things about word of honor, which i believe is based off of tian ye ke/faraway wanderers by priest. little mushroom has a first volume english translation on am*zon that i haven’t yet read but am planning to in the new year. but you’re right in that access is a little difficult to find for more “indie” authors and novels. hopefully that changes in the coming years though!
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phoenix-of-jade · 10 days
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what color characters are you?
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Orange Character
Orange characters are charismatic and talented. They push themselves to be the best at everything they put their mind to, and get upset when they can’t meet their own standards. They tend to be prodigies, seeming almost superhuman in their genius or abilities, but they often base their self-worth off of how well they can perform, making them feel isolated from the others around them. While most people see orange characters as cocky and self-absorbed, they are actually quite insecure in themselves. They want attention and validation from others, but because of their faux confidence and the constant (and often somewhat empty) praise from the people around them, the people that are truly closest to them often withhold it from them. This often leads them to push themselves beyond their limits to succeed and/or act out in unhealthy and self-destructive ways, in an effort to get some kind of recognition. These characters seek to impress, and have a hard time telling praise from love. They have a constant need to be the hero, in whatever context that means for them. These characters usually have a sense of humor and wit that can tend to flatter themselves (although much of what they say is rooted in truth), but it’s contrasting to some of their more self-deprecating natures. They can be serious loners, since they isolate themselves from others in an attempt to protect themselves. Although they would never admit it, they crave acceptance and belonging. Others generally don’t see this, because orange characters are loathe to admit weakness and build up defenses by making it clear that they don’t care what others think, although they do. In childhood, it is likely that their parental figures were either absent or abusive, often holding them up to high standards while not providing enough positive reinforcement. Other characters need to treat orange characters not as an annoyance, or give up on them quickly, but to make it clear that they are willing to love and support them regardless of how useful they can be, and to voice compliments where they are due.
OOC: Okay, while it didn't give me green for Xuan, this is still hella accurate on a very deep level, so I guess Xuan is indeed closer to orange than green... Interesting!
Tagged by: @lostxtosunlight Tagging: @pillowxtalk, @officerconners, @vulpuslunae, @secretxxpaladaiseu, @anemia-rp, @beommiya, @h0-seok, @thesquad-rp and anyone else who sees this and wants to do it for their character(s). ;)
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patron-minette · 8 months
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In this article snippet from Qui? Détective (1949), a real criminal gang is briefly compared to the fictional Patron-Minette. (source).
Some brief context on this publication— the Qui Detective magazine, which was being published weekly at this time, was regularly criticised for the “sensationalist” portrayal of crime in its articles in order to maintain “suspense”.
Within this extract we can observe how theatrical language is used to liken real-life murderers Nédelec, Babin, Planchais, and Bardy to the fictional characters Gueulemer, Montparnasse, Claquesous, Babet (and Thénardier). These individuals are referred to as “silhouettes farouches d’escarpes” who masterminded the murder of a man called Mariotti.
While I can’t imagine much thought was put into the specific comparisons made here— e.g Nédelec being a real-life Gueulemer, and Babin being a real-life Montparnasse (I really don’t think that the publication would’ve expected any readers to unpack these fleeting references at all!)— ultimately, the Patron-Minette and Thénardier are employed as a metaphor for dramatic, sensationalised crime in this context—thus providing an intriguing insight of how crime and theatrics have remained entwined in both fictional works and accounts of real-life criminality over time.
Attempted translation into English. [It's like reading a chapter from the Misérables, the one that shows us the hideous depths of the underworld: Montparnasse, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous... But in this Assize Court of Versailles, these actors of darkness are called Babin (that's Montparnasse); Nédelec (that's Gueulemer); Planchais (that's Claquesous). The innkeeper of Montfermeil, Thénardier, is now a Parisian innkeeper; his name is Bardy. It was at his place that the evil deeds were prepared; it was at his place that the fierce silhouettes of escarpes crept in one evening and masterminded the murder of the crémier Mariotti. The crime netted them 480,000 francs. But now they had to pay. The two ringleaders, Nédelec and Babin, were sentenced: Nédelec to death; Babin to life imprisonment; thanks to M Georgie Myers, always moving and able to win the hearts and minds of jurors, Babin saved his head: T. F.** to life imprisonment; the others were sentenced: Planchais, to 15 years' imprisonment; Bardy and Coche, to 10 years' imprisonment; Alexis Le Rhun and Victor Castori, to 3 years' imprisonment; the Golhen woman, Barby's mistress, to 5 years' imprisonment; the Gandon woman: 1 year's suspended sentence.]
(**‘T.F’ likely stands for ‘travaux forcés’, aka hard labour.)
For those curious to read more of the (very limited) information I’ve been able to source about the real-life criminals discussed in this source, please see below the cut:
I haven’t been able to discover too much about Nédelec and Babin or learn a lot about this crime that they committed— I’m assuming that it didn’t break into the realm of becoming a national news story as there’s seemingly only very limited information available online. However, what I can confirm with absolute certainty is that Nédelec, Babin, and the other criminals listed in Qui? Detective’s article were indeed real people.
Other newspapers at the time, including Combat, also documented Nédelec’s arrest and subsequent execution (please note that while the article in Combat spells the name ‘Nédellec’ rather than ‘Nédelec’, the crimes committed by the individual were identical, so I think it is safe to assume that both of these publications were talking about the same man here). In addition, a man named ‘Nedellec’ appears as a ‘co-détenus’ in French execution records in 1950— I can only assume this also is the same ‘Nédelec’ we see mentioned in Qui? Detective. 
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(Extract from Combat, 1949. Source).
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theflyindutchwoman · 2 months
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Eric still talks a lot about Chenford on the cameos now. But I did notice he slacked off there for a while about a yr, he really didn’t tag a lot of stuff or talk about Chenford and it all came down to when SOME fans got creepy and started shipping him and Melissa irl not being able to separate the two and tweeting Ros saying that him and Melissa should run away together. Making edits on TikTok, cutting Ros’s face out and putting Melissa‘s in to which I know Ros did not like that at all she tried laughing it off on the podcast, but you could tell it bothered her. I mean there’s always a few that ruin things for everybody else. So a PSA, if people love the show and these characters, don’t be disrespectful to anyone’s spouses or boyfriend’s girlfriends.
Thank you for providing some more context, dear Anon :) I just want to clarify that when I mentioned this issue in my previous reply, I didn't mean to imply that this was why Eric wasn't posting as much about Chenford (or tagging). I simply meant that it wasn't the first time that it happened. I honestly haven't followed what was going on over there since the summer hiatus.
And yes, you're absolutely right : he does still talk about them - or even hype them - a lot on Cameos, so I'm not sure that it's entirely fair to say that he is distancing himself from Chenford. That said, Cameos are quite different than Instagram posts since he is directly asked questions about Lucy and Tim. It's not quite the same as him posting pictures or videos on his social media for everyone to see, if you know what I mean. Not to mention that there is a transactional aspect to cameos that come into play. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he could always ignore them if that truly bothered him, which is why I'm not particularly worried about what his distancing means. On a side note, I don't think him not tagging posts #chenford is much of an issue either, considering that most will see them anyway, by virtue of following him in the first place.
As for the issue you're mentioning… It's unfortunately nothing new. I have yet to see one fandom where that type of issue didn't come up at some point. I'm not going to lie, I really love Meleric and their dynamic (or at least, the part that we see)… If someone wants to make edits and all, why not. What I don't understand is the need some feel to tag his wife in these… Or to be straight up disrespectful. What's the point?! Like you said, the only thing it is going to accomplish, is making Eric stop posting and sharing contents. Or limit the comments and interactions. It seems counterproductive to me… But that's just me :)
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glialcell7429 · 1 year
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I’ve been rewatching RENT, specifically the 2008 version (imo the best version, also free on YouTube). Since it’s the first musical I ever really got into, it brings back fond memories. It’s been eye opening to catch all the little things I had no appreciation for as a high school freshman, for instance: the song Contact.
I didn’t like the song when I first saw the show because I found it kind of discordant. It felt like a random sexual interlude in between two heart-wrenching songs that felt like it had no purpose other than to be a tonal palette cleanser. But now, knowing more context for the history of AIDS activism at the time, I think I have more insight. When RENT first came out in the mid 90s, there had been a shift in the narrative about HIV/AIDS from a “gay plague” to an illness that could impact anyone and a multitude of reasons beyond sexual (e.g. Ryan White, a teenager and hemophiliac who contracted the disease from a blood transfusion). This marked a valuable shift because it opened the general public to being receptive to funding research, humanitarian aid, etc. as it because more of a public health concern than something that could be banished to a “shameful” region of society and ignored.
However beneficial this increased awareness was, it does sideline the more “unpalatable” people who did contract HIV from explicit, “devious” sexual encounters. So, Angel’s refrain in Contact “Take me” can mean not just “take me [sexually]” and “take me [up to heaven]”, but also “take me [in my entirety]”. Take me as a queer, cross-dressing person who got this disease from unprotected gay sex and realize that your activism includes all of me. Not just the flattering parts of me (generosity and creativity) but my sexual identity and all of its taboo rituals and “distasteful” debauchery that the people don’t want to have to acknowledge to fully support the people living with this illness. HIV and AIDS activism isn’t complete until the conversation includes everyone; even society’s unsavory underbelly. I think the repetition of the word “lover” in Contact as well as I’ll Cover You and the reprise serves a similar purpose. I’ll Cover You is very sweet, romantic, probably easier to digest for the general public of the time. But, “lover” is used in both songs to signify that the palatable and unpalatable are inextricable; Collins and Angel’s relationship being accepted can’t be conditional on just the cute, mild aspects of their relationship, they’re also queer men who have (probably non-vanilla) sex and that’s a fact that has to be part of the conversation around a sexually transmitted disease.
Also, side note: the depth of Angel and Collins’ relationship feels a lot more apparent to me this go-around. Like, I think they kind of felt like a loving foil to all the turbulent relationships we see throughout, that didn’t have drama because it wasn’t plot relevant, but in retrospect, they didn’t have drama because in the shadow of such a finite time limit, the little quarrels were probably insignificant. Collins and Angel never had that full 526,000 minutes together, and they spent what little time they had in full, head-over-heels love for each other. Similarly, I used to think Angel, say, providing groceries for Mark and Roger or buying Collins a new coat was just, like “Oh here’s this great character who’s just an infallibly good person to balance out these other assholes.” But, Angel must have known she didn’t have much time left, and in as much as she was generous by her nature, I’m sure she was also generous because she knew her time was coming to a close. Which absolutely breaks my heart.
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