#it changes her sense of self from what it would have been as illegitimate but she has seen the evidence of the violence the world (europe)

[trashlie]

You're right it's very possible that Nol had a fight with his mother... I was also moved to a different country as a child, and I remember having a phase where I resented my parents for it because I was promised all these good things, but all I got was homesickness and feeling lost in the new environment. It was probably similar for him, and it would make complete sense if he argued with Nessa about it. And related to what you sad about Nol being angry and bitter and hot-headed... I keep thinking about the dialogue that was like "He sent someone's son to the hospital" or something like that. We know it was not Kousuke, because he seemed physically fine after whatever happened. So it must be someone different then. And... Nol must have gone to school, right? Yes they were illegal immigrants, but surely Rand could have pulled some strings to get his son into a school. If he was homeschooled like Alyssa, we would probably know that, right? So, what if before the incident with Kousuke, Nol got into a fight, maybe even multiple times? Maybe those kids in school teased Nol for something. For looking different, the red hair, the freckles, his foreign name, maybe not speaking the language well. Maybe they were rumors going around about his mother, how she is a mistress, how his father is a skirt chaser, how Nol is an illegitimate child, how they're all bad people. Kids can be cruel and probably used less polite words, if you know what I mean. And Nol was already dealing with everything you mentioned. Maybe those kids pushed it too far and he snapped and lashed out. Similarly to what happened with Shin-Ae, basically. Except Shin-Ae was this small girl, she couldn't do *too* much damage (though the boy she fought looked pretty rough), but Nol was always big and tall for his age, so maybe he underestimated his strength and severely injured someone.

Think of it this way, too: One instance of being violent and unstable isn't really enough to justify locking a child into a mental facility for two years, especially with the media involved and the whole story being very public. There are procedures and protocols in place. Sure, Yui could've arranged it regardless. But what I think happened is that she got wind of the fight at school, and used it to her advantage. Made Nol appear like a repeat offender. There were already rumors and even "proof" of him being unstable and aggressive, which makes him getting violent again so much more believable, right. Much easier to convince everyone that putting him in the facility is necessary, that it's the right thing to do. It would also make it easier for Kousuke to believe Yui's narrative, because the kid attacked someone at school and you're his victim too but don't worry he is under control now you're safe. And most importantly, it would make it easier to make Nol believe that about himself. I didn't do anything to Kousuke but everyone keeps telling me that I did, so maybe I'm wrong? I know I lost control and hurt someone before, so maybe they're right and it happened again? Can I even trust what I remember, what I believe? Maybe there really is something very wrong with me? Maybe I am an unstable dangerous person that should be kept away from everyone? That deserves punishment? It would be so much easier to insert these beliefs into his head, mess with his memories and his self-perception, when there is undeniable proof of violent behavior and he probably already feels guilty about that and is starting to question himself...

First off, Nonny 💕 Thank you for sharing your experience 🥺 I can't imagine that must've been easy for you as a child to deal with such a radical change to your life.

But yes, I very much agree with you! I can't remember if I've ever said it on here or if it's only come up in my conversations, but I've been wondering for a while now if Nol DID, in fact, hurt someone. It used to be that I wondered if he really DID hurt Kousuke - quimchee has said before that they've had one fight. But a couple things never made sense. Wasn't it curious that he said "people got hurt"?

In retrospect, it seems like an odd way to put it - that he had issues plural and that was what kept them apart. People got hurt. Even the article that mentions the heir being attacked doesn't make it sound like Kousuke had to be hospitalized. But right, I agree he very well still could have sent someone's kid to the hospital with everything he had on his plate - his unhappiness, the hot-headed anger, kids being cruel and bullying him, spreading rumors, being xenophobic, etc.

There's also this

"Especially after hearing how you were treated in middle school."

This has stuck out to me ever since this episode dropped because of what we DO concretely know... nothing really fits that logic, does it? Had Nol ever fought Kousuke, that's not something that he'd think relates to Shinae being bullied and fighting a kid in act of desperation.

But if Nol was fighting kids, had really hurt someone and his very important father pulled weight so Nol got into less trouble... That feels like it could be something he fears will change her perception of him, what he thinks of her. Because right, even if he was lashing out after being pushed too far, the right button was pushed and he attacked, it's SO easy to see how he could turn that on himself. Further to this point, it sounds like he was put through anger management therapy and we know he uses his punching bag to let out his anger, we can absolutely see how very easily he blames himself, how HE could have been convinced of all of this. That he's unstable, he's dangerous, he needs to be subdued.

And further to that, it makes me wonder if punching Sangchul was parallel to what happened in his past. Again, Sangchul was the one taunting him, baiting him because he was certain Nol was too much of a coward to attack, so he pressed his buttons and Nol snapped. And what's more, Kousuke knows a LOT of intimate details about Nol and his family. Plenty of people know rumors about Nol and his institutionalization. Maybe Sangchul figired not only was Nol too much of a coward to act out but because he has a pre-existing record he couldn't lash out without getting into trouble.

And because everything is a parallel and Nol and Shinae are mirrors, it feels very likely that his own incidents with fighting and hurting someone were similar to Shinae's experience, where he reached his limit where it all spilled out where he lashed out at the people who were making his life hell and more miserable than before. Again, it's SO EASY to twist it around on him if he made that first move. "You should have just ignored them. You shouldn't have let their words get to you. You struck first. You hurt someone."

Likewise, it makes it so much easier to kind of brainwash him with this thinking in the hospital. To convince him that he's a bad person who deserves no kindness, who needs to be punished. As readers we get it, we understand. We see how he's been treated by people, reduced to nothing, made to feel like a bother, a mistake, that he only makes things worse. His mother's death looks like suicide, like she took her own life and abandoned him in this foreign country so far away from anyone he knows and left with this cruel family who treats him like he doesn't exist, shouldn't exist, and all of the kids who have bullied him and made him feel like shit. 😭😭😭

How easy it would be to convince this poor kid, this illegitimate bastard of the Hirahara family living as an undocumented immigrant in their shadow, that he is a terrible person who has hurt so many people who doesn't belong here who only hurts people, who can only bring harm to the people he cares about. It also would explain why he worked so hard at absolution - he believes he has so much to atone for.

And that's the worst part, isn't it? To know that he probably did fight, probably did hurt someone after putting up for so long with people taunting him, mocking, bullying him, that no one defended or protected him and when he reached breaking point, he was faulted for how he reacted. It sounds like no one gave him the help he REALLY needed, the understanding and compassion as well as the anger management. All too often when it comes to bullying we see this kind of thing, too. Those children were responsible for pushing his buttons but instead he gets blamed because he couldn't "just ignore them". Instead he was made to feel like a monster, to take all of the blame for not being able to handle what others did to him. Expecting people, especially children, to be able to carry that kind of stress, to live with those kinds of harassment and never to step in or defend them, to try to put a stop to it before it reached that stage. 😭

Once again and as always, these children were all failed by the adults meant to protect them and I will never get over it.

#I Love Yoo #ILY Brainrot #ILY Anon #Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn #i have so many feelings about this and esp about the kids being failed by the adults #it KILLS me #and esp if we are right about this yes Nol did need some help it's good that he's got an outlet for his frustration and anger these days #but at the risk of taking the blame for everything #for feeling like he is a dangerous monster #that he causes hurt and pain #that BECAUSE of all of that he believes he must always be punished that he doesn't even deserve kindness and friendship #😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 #hurts my heart #they fucked up this poor child #and as a result he's internalized EVERYTHING #EVEN HIS MOM'S DEATH 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 #also i wrote this on mobile pls forgive any typos lmao i am abysmal at writing on my phone but i HAD to answer this

[horizon-verizon]

Criston Cole--HotD & Canon Characterization and Headcanons

Inspired by this post by @rosehathaways-sidepiece.​

(I think that this is one of the better written characters of the show, but it’s not coincidental that he is one of the HotD characters who has least changes from the book.)

Criston’s vows as a Kingsguard, a knight, and as a man all are interwoven into this thick ball of self worth that’s he’s pulled a thread from and unraveled when he slept with Rhaenyra. But he’s a hypocrite.

ONE

The First and Common Criticisms of Criston Cole

The most controversial argument I’ve put out there to people outside of Tumblr was that Criston Cole would have been fine (or better) if he had just kept his mouth shut about sleeping with Rhaenyra and that he has the room and ability to control himself from attacking Joffrey in public.

Others argued for how guilty he felt for his cloak’s “soiling” and/or how he would be castrated or executed for having sex despite his vows. That to him, his oaths matter more than base, material pride. That he was a commonborn man trying to get ahead in a court order f high born lords against social mobility

The problems with these are: 

he comes from the stormlands house of Cole whose overlord is House Dondarrion; he is a nobleman. A petty noble, but still noble with some privileges. Canonically. The show makes it seem he was not noble.

yes there would be some tension over a petty noble knight rising to become a princess/prince/royal's guardsman, but honestly, the Kingsguard position is open to any knight and the decision to choose one falls entirely on the Monarch

that the show makes it easy to suspect that Cole felt he couldn’t say no to Rhaenyra when she invited him in episode 4 so we don’t know if he wanted Rhaenyra, or if he just felt the need to say yes, or if it was both (more below, in "TWO")

he was actually using the excuse of “honor” to marry Rhaenyra, not love; his metaphorical cloak is stained and he wants to make up for that with marriage

But:

running away to elope would bring great disgrace to both his and Rhaenyra’s families--not just Rhaenyra herself. So how does this make sense, the honor argument?

as a member of the Kingsguard, he only answers to the King and does not have to follow any orders from Rhaenyra that compromise his purpose and position. In this way, Cole has a lot more leeway than if we see a woman in his position. A woman cannot be a Kingsguard, can't even be a knight.

Thus, he does have leeway to use Rhaenyra’s approach against her. 

He could have used the fact that he took celibacy vows against Rhaenyra....

But chose to sleep with her anyway.

He, again, only answers to the King. 

He has been living in court being Rhaenyra’s personal guard for years. Some of us thought that he should have known that nobles largely do not follow the same rules that excuse their positions through rumors. That they withhold and lie to protect themselves. (And generally, humans are wont to try to bend their own rules to satisfy their own desires.) 

And so we think that he should have done the same--patiently withhold information and observe what happens so he could adapt to it--while Alicent was getting to ask if Rhaenyra had slept with Daemon, and not if he slept with her.

It may not be faithful to one's vows, but if he actually knew what kind of person Rhaenyra was, that she would never run away with him (as he should after so many years of being with her and thus I think he did know but asked anyway, this he never really cared about her but himself), then he should have never brought up the suggestion of running away or thought she'd ever marry him. What exactly did he think would happen for him after sleeping w/her? And as I argued, he had much more choice than some may think and took advantage of it. As nobles often do.

Rhaenyra is not special for being a noble/royal woman and having either/both premarital and extramarital sex and/or having illegitimate children. People be having sex. She’s unlucky enough to not get away with it because others (Otto) wanted power and used her actions against her.

TWO

HotD has once again purposefully inserted ethical wrongness into a female character when there wasn't any, or little, reason to suspect any. Messing with Rhaenyra's characterization in order to make her more CoMpLeX at expense of her story about Criston making unwanted advances on her and telling a better story where we espy the entitlement that a person may feel after having been ensured the protection of a young girl most of her life.

In the book, there are 2 versions of what happened to Rhaenyra from Septon Eustace and Mushroom. Here is Eustace's account. Here is Mushroom's.

I'd argue that it is far more likely that book!Criston had wanted to take advantage of Rhaenyra rather than for her to actually sleep with him. She definitely had a crush on him that promotes her to choose him as guardsman for herself (and not Kingsguard); she chose him when she was 7 or so, though.

Plus, the idea of a"lady" (princess in this case, but this figure is supposed to be a female noble) and her knight having secret, impassioned, forbidden liaisons is a feature of the Westerosi courtly romance (by virtue of the fact that it is similar to and modelled after real life medieval courtly romances). In real courtly romance, the blockage is usually that the lady being married while her lover ensures his spiritual devotion to her, unable to ever consummate his love for her but willing to sacrifice his strength and life and attention into a spear of devotion for his lady love. All which narratively is supposed to also elevate the lady because such devotion has its religious precedents of the devour to the Virgin Mary or God. There was also influence from Islamic mystical philosophy that characterized and describes the condition of romantic love/erotic desire as being an "illness" of a certain ecstasy.

The devotion reflects on the lady's supposed worthiness of being "worshipped". And courtly love was conceived as an "experience" somewhere b/t erotic desire and spiritual attainment, "a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent" (Francis X. Newman (1968). The Meaning of Courtly Love).

These are guidelines/principles/expectations traditions for the love game, as written by the 12th cen. Frenchman, Andreas Capellanus, in "De Arte Honeste Amandi" ("The Art of Courtly Love").

Marriage is no real excuse for not loving

He who is not jealous cannot love

No one can be bound by a double love

It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing

That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish

Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity

When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor

No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons

No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love

Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice

It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry

A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved

When made public love rarely endures

The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized

Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved

When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved, his heart palpitates

A new love puts to flight an old one

Good character alone makes any man worthy of love

If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives

A man in love is always apprehensive

Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love

Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved

He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little

Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved

A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved

Love can deny nothing to love

A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved

A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved

A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love

A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved

Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.

Since, at the time, Rhaenyra was not married (one subversion) but still outside of Cole's reach due to their large difference of rank & degree and her father never agreeing to this (and his later devotion to the Kingsguard and its vows), Cole's supposed love for Rhaenyra, instead of being "pure" and steady, is corrupted through longing and closeness with the selfish desire to possess, claim, and eventual predation. Rhaenyra could have very well been pedestalizes to make Criston's longing "worth it"; his attraction to her translates as platonic devotion and image of body-mental purity. As long as she stays "pure", he could long and worship from afar, but if she's getting intimate with people (Daemon) "unworthy" of her....

The two genres of courtly romance and in chivalric romances are interconnected, since the motif of psuedo-submissive devotion is central to the cultural identity of the knight figure and his masculinity. Rhaenyra staying "spiritually pure" is a way for Criston to affirm his own self-sacrificing strength as a successful knight/Andal male warrior.

Such stories is both familiar and tantalizing for those nobles observing or reading; Mushroom uses this tale to say that Rhaenyra was the one to pursue Cole and the twist it into Rhaenyra being the unseemly one, the one looking for sex for the sake of scandalizing his audience (esp when we add his addition of her sleeping with Harwin after Criston supposedly rejected her). Even if he did believe it, he wouldn't stop himself from embellishing. Then he is also very interested in inserting himself into Rhaenyra's sexual activities to gain more attention and imaginary intimacy with his object of desire--Rhaenyra herself. Mushroom, honestly is like the bawdier kind of devolved bard because, as a jester and a dwarf, he'd be less valued or listened to as these events were happening. But after the Dance, then gain credence to build on and realize a fantasy that he might have always had. Like the bards and troubadours of real EU history who created and promoted courtly and chivalric romances in their songs and others, Mushroom wished to immortalize himself--gain an audience, a historical one, that would use him as a source of the events that occurred around him. He went about it in a much more tawdry way, of course, but his desire is evident

More reasons for Cole being the rejected pursuer: Again, her house pride BUT also, we see at her wedding tourney that Criston gets very angry at her public refusal of his request from her favor. Why would he be so angry if she was the one to approach him for sex and he was the one to immediately reject her advances, as Mushroom relates? He would have already protected his celibacy and have reason to avoid Rhaenyra or hold his head up high for sticking to his values after she refuses to give him her favor.

But instead, he gets excessively angry, which indicates she rejected him sex completely, there was no one night stand or affair and that made him feel small enough to be excessively violent and forever disparage her, call her a whore, etc.

If his lady love/beloved and "goddess" rejected him and his attempts to "rescue" her...wouldn't there be a break in that relationship (another subversion of the courtly romance narrative)? Wouldn't Rhaenyra likely end their relationship and/or avoid him even if she still has a crush, why would it be enough against her desire to become Queen and the danger Criston could present to her after he made his interest known and she rejected him the first time? Thus the murderous, possessive anger he displayed.

Ironically (or rather pointedly) the idea of the courtly love game was that the lady became the one holding the political power that troubadours and courtiers seek favors from, as aristocratic life became more and more centered around on inside the castles/aristocratic residences by the 1200s. But we see in Fire and Blood a case for how Rhaenyra was made a victim of near-SA.

Finally, I think she wouldn't approach Cole because we see that she compiled to marry Laenor after he father told her he would reconsider her as his heir if she continues to insist on Daemon (she wants power and love, unwilling to totally sacrifice one when her uncle is not even available by being married to Rhea Royce and Viserys being so distrustful), she has shown much more trust and affection towards Daemon than Cole, AND a childhood crush is like to peter out in rha faced her Targ-uncle bond. Even without that bond, we don't have any trustworthy evidence of Rhaenyra's crush developing into anything deeper when Daemon was absent.

THREE

But let’s consider Criston the character's immediate environment in accordance to his position and how it shapes how he views his psychology and personal philosophy:

A)

Because he is Rhaenyra’s guard and she definitely wouldn’t have forced herself to spend much time with the courtiers for long--especially after Alicent has birthed sons for Viserys by episode 3--he then wouldn’t have had to interact or be around with much nobles at court to observe them (but it’s more than that--Point “D” below).

B)

Being a steward’s son is not a bad deal. A steward of a noble house, like real life medieval stewards and the Night’s Watch stewards: 

are responsible for an assortment of critical functions, providing vital day-to-day services for their brothers on the wall. They hunt and farm, tend horses, gather firewood, cook meals, make clothing, maintain weapons, and bring the supplies needed

His father was either a lesser noble-born vassal working for the Dondarrions as a steward or a common-born vassal steward of a well-off noble house. Again, this means he himself was a nobleman, not a commonborn

I look to the Tyrells who used to be the High Stewards of the House Gardner before Aegon I for the “noble steward” scenario, but even then, the dad was still a steward benefiting from running important tasks for the House he was serving and thus living close to or in the castle itself.

Criston's father would be in a position that privileges him like how the Hand position privileges the Hand, since the proximity to the power lends him more influence and advantage than others.

So, it’s not likely that Criston was ever materially lacking. But he made the choice to try to be something more, having the will and ambition to leave and fight in melees, tourneys, and (in the show) battles against Storm’s End. 

It’s possible that he and his father experienced some prejudice from some nobles around him (we don’t get a lookie in the show, but oh well). But seriously, any and all peasants would have because this is a feudal society. Criston and his father would not be special for it.

Again, if anything they would have been treated better than most other servants and peasants.

C)

At the same time, noblemen tend to inherit privileges and powers that make that idealized “glory” more accessible to them. And the higher/richer ones are the ones who would use him and are the ones he used to rise.

His military prowess is only valuable to these nobles and is his currency to move up in this highly stratified and rigid social hierarchy. But like his father, he thus has some more privilege, this time more than your average warrior.

We also remember that Criston is written as Kingmaker, and it's not a nice title. He's remembered as a traitor and getting too involved in politics, going above his station or purpose as. Kingsguard. Jaime Lannister points this out in AGoT.

D)

I think he would have developed into thinking he was--in one way--“better” than those nobles around him for being able to beat the game and for proving how “pure” of heart and worthy he was. 

Compromise is not in Cole’s vocabulary. 

If he heard the gossip and learned about the nobles’ slippings and he never learned to create an identity for himself that wasn’t determined by how low in rank he was next to these high nobles, I imagine that he’d feel self-satisfied every time he hear a courtier slipping. Quietly enjoying himself and sing their slipping to bulster how “right” he is and is acting. Further and further diving deep into that well of purity and a sense of moral superiority.

But he’s still defining his basic identity through the models of masculinity and military prowess-x-sexual purity values.

Being Kingsguard locks him out of the typical ways a man can find their glory/purpose: marrying a high(/er) status, rich(/er), (better)family connections or (better)well-resourced woman/girl; have children to pass down their family name, trade or legacy; or have kids that would become people who later do praiseworthy deeds. He can only rely on being a Kingsguard if he wants to be that perfect model or fulfill that ambition to be “the best” man.

So that would explain why he wouldn’t bother to be as crafty or willing to be more cunning as these nobles or at least try to think like them. Because he develops a superiority complex along with his inferior one.

Quick Notes

his nonnoble background: how hard and persistent he had to be to climb up to even get noticed by Rhaenyra and other nobles before her; having had feelings of inferiority being the son of a steward and having been around nobles who may not have respected him nor his father

how highly he values being a knight: which is supposed to be a high ideal of masculine prowess and excellence (you don’t hear anything about female knights except here and there and knighthood is customarily reserved for men) 

what else being a Kingsguard means to him (pt.1): not only has he troubled the idea that one’s "blood” and class determines whether you will rise or gain any sort of power in this feudal system that prioritizes family lines, he’s now part of a unit in charge of protecting the king and the heir even being as lowborn as he is 

what else being a Kingsguard means to him (pt.2): how he has taken vows that make him a strong religious example of piety and morality --> he’s not just a great warrior, he’s a “holy” knight of sorts because his vows bind him to a conceived “higher” duty 

So no, Criston is trying to distance himself from the “soiling” and trying to replace his honor through another sacred bond and through another set of sacred vows when he proposed to Rhaenyra. 

He was attracted to her, but his main motivation was to escape the shame of his soiled cloak and soiled honor. That his honor is actually a lie, a made-up thing in itself. That he, himself, soiled it and thus he, himself, has made himself a liar.

This is what makes him end up as someone else's figurative and existential "slave", at least in seeming to some fans.

#criston cole #hotd comment #fire and blood comment #rhaenyra targaryen #alicent hightower #hotd accountability #fire and blood characters #criston cole's characterization #hotd #asoiaf #fire and blood

[emcads]

okay i know i joke about esmeralda being this icon of femininity that teaches the other characters how to do their makeup or how to achieve the current fashions but something that just. hits different. about esmeralda and her connection with beauty/femininity is that it’s completely manufactured and generated: makeup is painted and removed, clothes are woven and sewn into garments,  it isn’t a natural beauty or a beauty of purity but one that is created out of her own action  (although she shares a lot of these generative, traditionally feminine symbols with Amenirdis like clothing, contrast this with Amenirdis’ natural state being the one of beauty and her illusory state being one of ugliness) in fact Esmeralda is specifically referenced as unnatural and unholy during her fight with Bainbridge: 

“Impossible! No woman could captain a vessel. That would be unnatural, a violation of the laws of God and man. The…the Almighty would never permit it.”

granted he’s fairly drunk but there’s a line he crosses when he learns the captain is a female: it’s no longer an earthly issue of legal property rights or the physical altercation or even sailor superstition, instead his attacks are moral/spiritual and invoking God.  he’s right in that Esmeralda is not a natural woman, existing in a ��pure” state of womanhood or trying to portray that state falsely: she crossdresses, she wears makeup, she is indulgent and violent and lascivious. she is beautiful but she is the furthest thing from the eighteenth century ideal of the white, docile, English beauty;  Jack thinks of her only as a lady but we know whatever class Esmeralda has is not due to her by birthright from Spain, with an indigenous mother she does not have the “pure” bloodlines of European class and the benefits that go with that. ( if she had them, it was at Don Rafael’s efforts, and her parents’ murders/the burning of his estate demonstrate colonial society’s resistance to that deviation )  her nobility as perceived by Jack is thus something contrived and manufactured outside of right of blood, law, or society.  ( but more than an equal to theirs, thus exposing their own standards as contrived, but I digress ). she’s placed into a convent but instead of devoting life to god / abstinence / purity, she chooses masculinity: crossdressing, having sex with men, wielding a sword (read: the phallic symbol) and taking life rather than creating it. and yet she maintains sex appeal for men and unquestionable femininity: 

“Jack began kissing her hands, short-nailed and strong from work, but they were well-tended and feminine. He could never have mistaken them for a man’s hands.”

in her hands –– which are the agents of creation and generation –– there’s masculine behavior (wielding a sword, tending ropes at sea) matched with feminine shape and behavior (managing her appearance, softness in care to self ). without going too much into it I think what I’m starting to get at is the Eve/Lilith dichotomy, and while Esmeralda absolutely does top Jack and see herself as more than equal to men I’m more interested in Lilith’s pursuit: 

“The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God's word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, 'We shall drown you in the sea.’“

the sea is something feminine that gives life, to sailors it gives death. to Jack the sea means freedom and rebirth;  to Esmeralda the sea has only ever meant blood, conquest, revenge, and death. 

#// long post #i need to read up more on lilith before i start spouting more bullshit but thoughts are Forming in my brain about shipwreck cove as eden #( literally a city of plenty and based in life-giving water; safe and unseen to the outside world ) #and esmeralda as she's shown in shipwreck as eve whereas esmeralda post shipwreck after she's gained her captaincy as lilith #jack drinks his respect women juice so he always sees her as beautiful and amazing no matter what / he's impressed with her captaincy & more #masculine traits ( but taken in the context that jack is antithetical to the values of mainstream society & struggles against them too ) #also in terms of lilith topping see bainbridge not letting himself be ''plundered'' by a woman or metaphorically ''topped'' by one #so much there. no much juicy content in a potc prequel novel. in the r rated crispin cut esme probably tops jack. #but we are forced to wonder #✘; IN A WORLD WITHOUT GOLD，WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN HEROES ( headcanon ) #how the fuck did i start at ''esme is a beauty influencer lol'' and end up at ''esme is lilith'' #goddamn academia brain fuck off #also i want to be clear that i only briefly mentioned race here because especially in context with amenirdis esmeralda's #race plays a far less significant part in the events of the book than it does to the princess so i feel i should distinguish between #esmeralda being judged as less eurocentrically feminine vs. amenirdis literally being enslaved #with this in mind her race does affect those standards and it certainly impacts her social status & rights; Jack's opinion that she could be #a lady of court is simply not true and if she were she would be rejected #crispin is careful about this but the implication that it was the 'marriage' of her father and mother that caused the uprising of local #white europeans ( NOT the sex or lust but the legal and societal validation ) #it changes her sense of self from what it would have been as illegitimate but she has seen the evidence of the violence the world (europe) #will do. she has the deaths of her parents to reckon with as people who transgressed past those boundaries and she is the manifestation of #the ''crimes'' against spain which would see them murdered for it #anyway i wrote a whole other essay in the tags whoops

[princesssarisa]

A defense of the ending of “Wuthering Heights"

@astrangechoiceoffavourites, @theheightsthatwuthered, @wuthering-valleys, @heightsandmoors, @incorrectwutheringheightsquotes

 I’ve been reading other people’s opinions on Wuthering Heights this past year, I’ve noticed a small recurring theme.

It’s the idea that the ending feels out of place; tacked on; anti-climactic; too tame compared to the rest of the book. That it feels wrong for Heathcliff to simply lose interest in his revenge and then lose the will to live, or for the surviving characters to have any kind of happy or hopeful ending after so much brutality.

One book I read excerpts from on Google Books (I don’t remember the title or the author) suggested that maybe Emily Brontë originally wrote a very different, more brutal and Gothic ending, now lost. The author proposed that the final ending was probably the result of Anne and/or Charlotte urging Emily to tone down the book’s “immorality.” Of course this is pure conjecture. This same author also speculated that in the novel’s first draft, Heathcliff was explicitly Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, but that Anne and/or Charlotte persuaded Emily to change it. I’m not at all convinced by that theory, since @astrangechoiceoffavourites has argued very eloquently that to make Heathcliff and Cathy’s love forbidden because of the incest taboo rather than because of social class and race would go against the plot’s main themes and make nonsense of Heathcliff’s revenge on the Lintons and Earnshaws.

Still, this theorist isn’t the only person to think the ending (and possibly the whole second generation storyline) feels like the work of a different author than the rest of the book. Just recently I read a comment on Facebook arguing that a more cohesive, consistent Wuthering Heights would have had “a much darker and more explosive ending.” I assume a similar mindset is why some theorize that Branwell wrote the novel’s first half and Emily wrote the second. (I think I hate that theory even more than I hate the theory that Branwell wrote it all – “He didn’t write the whole book, but he did write the part everyone likes best.”) And if we compare the various adaptations’ endings to the ending of the book, there’s definitely a trend of giving Heathcliff a more brutal death.

I understand all of this. The ending of the book is ironic. Heathcliff himself knows it’s ironic: “It is a poor conclusion, is it not?” he asks Nelly, “an absurd termination to my violent exertions?” We don’t expect a towering, terrifying yet fascinating Byronic anti-hero like Heathcliff to become apathetic and ineffectual in the end and then die quietly (albeit mysteriously and eerily) in bed. We’d sooner expect him to freeze to death chasing Cathy’s ghost through a blizzard, or to be shot by his worst enemy, or to be lured by Cathy’s ghost to commit suicide by gunshot.

But I know I’m not the only person who thinks the entire book is fully cohesive and who sees nothing wrong with the ending whatsoever.

As far as I’m concerned, Heathcliff’s “absurd” end is more interesting than anything “darker and more explosive” would have been, precisely because it’s unexpected and yet makes perfect sense. Revenge never makes Heathcliff truly happy or brings him peace of mind: we know that all along. It might distract him from his pain, but it can’t cure it. While initially surprising, in hindsight it’s not surprising at all that, with no out-of-character repentance or remorse, he eventually loses the will to seek any more revenge. At heart it was never what he really wanted most; his real greatest desire is and always has been to be with Cathy.

Then there’s the strongest factor in his loss of his will for revenge: his grudging empathy for Hareton. Again, as far as I’m concerned, this is fascinating irony. Heathcliff has purposefully set out to shape Hareton into a copy of himself. Ultimately, that scheme “goes horribly right,” because he sees too much of his younger self in Hareton to hate him as much as he wants to, or to have the will to separate him from Cathy II the way he himself was separated from Cathy I. Then there’s Hareton’s resemblance to his aunt, Cathy I; even though Heathcliff’s passion for Cathy has been the motive for all his revenge on the two families that separated them, in the end it’s what makes him unable to ruin the lives of her lookalike nephew and her daughter, even though they’re also the children of the two men most responsible for taking Cathy from him. Again, it works because it’s handled delicately and without sentimentality. He still shows no remorse or regret for his past actions, and never shows any real kindness or fondness to Hareton or Cathy II, but despises the conflicted feelings they stir in him. But the fact remains that, despite all his efforts to be a monster over the years, he’s still a human being, capable of some empathy for people in whom he sees aspects of himself and of his beloved Cathy. I think it’s fascinating that this humanity, and not his monstrous actions, is what undoes him in the end.

Also, as some critics have pointed out, the very fact that Heathcliff receives no punishment for his sins (apart from his inner torment) makes the ending subversive by Victorian standards. If he had died a brutal death, it could easily have been viewed as his comeuppance, demonstrating God’s justice. From a moral and religious perspective, it might be all the more disturbing that instead he gets to die as close to a peaceful death as his character allows, with a devilish smile on his face.

Moving beyond Heathcliff’s death, I don’t see anything wrong with Hareton and Cathy II′s ending either.

First of all, it isn’t necessarily a straightforward happy ending. It’s definitely bittersweet if we have any sympathy for Heathcliff, and not just because he dies. This penniless, abused, disdained orphan of color defied the classism and racism of his society by clawing his way to wealth and status and by bringing down the two families who once oppressed him, but in the end, it’s all for nothing. Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange go back to the Earnshaw and Linton heirs and the only trace left of Heathcliff is a single name and death date on a tombstone. He’s just as much of a “nobody” in death as he was as a homeless child. Of course it’s tempting to cheer for this fact because of his cruelty and because Cathy II and Hareton are sympathetic, basically innocent young people whom he unfairly punished for their parents’ sins. But in a way at least, especially in Marxist readings of the book (which I don’t fully agree with but do see validity in), the ending can be viewed as the triumph of the classist and racist status quo.

Nor, as some critics have argued, is it guaranteed that Cathy II and Hareton will live happily ever after. First of all, the fact remains that Hareton loved and loyally served Heathcliff to the end, and to please Hareton, Cathy had to stop speaking out against Heathcliff even though he had horribly abused her. There’s also the fact that Hareton once hit Cathy himself; only once, and before they were even friends, let alone lovers, but in the real world it rarely bodes well for a woman to marry a man who once slapped her. A few critics have wondered if Hareton is really permanently “tamed” in the end, or will eventually revert to the roughness Heathcliff bred in him and abuse his new power and status the same way Heathcliff did. On the flip side, there’s the fact that apart from her conceding not to criticize Heathcliff, Cathy seems to rule over Hareton almost as much as her mother did over Heathcliff when they were children. She educates him, he craves her esteem and does her bidding, and in his lessons she meets his mistakes and inattention (however playfully) with “smart slaps” and threats of hair-pulling. Some critics have wondered if we should view these as red flags; if Cathy II is destined to be an emotional abuser like her mother was.

But even if you don’t subscribe to those darker interpretations of the ending... even if you view Cathy and Hareton as fundamentally good people who genuinely grow and change for the better, find a healthy balance between the worlds of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and will be truly happy together... well, what’s wrong with that?

Is it really so impossible to believe that sometimes the cycle of abuse can be broken, or so “out of place” to show it being broken at the end of a book that shows its horrors? Is it just naïve delusion to hope that, with effort, children can avoid repeating their parents’ mistakes and opposing social structures like the Heights and the Grange can be reconciled? That at least one young couple might manage to combine the good aspects of both worlds while discarding the bad, rather than combining the worst of both worlds the way Heathcliff did? Just because the book is dark as a whole, do we really need to be so cynical when reading it that we can’t allow it to end on a note of hope?

Besides, I’ve written before about the mirror-image character arcs of the two Cathys. Cathy I is born and raised at Wuthering Heights, but eventually leaves it for Thrushcross Grange when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the rugged dark-haired Heathcliff and wanders the moors with him, but then gains snobbery, treats Heathcliff with increasing disdain, and shifts her attentions to the prissy blond-haired Edgar, whom she marries; as a result, her life ends in misery. Cathy II is born and raised at Thushcross Grange, but eventually she leaves it for Wuthering Heights when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the prissy blond-haired Linton, whom she marries, and treats the rugged dark-haired Hareton with disdain, but eventually she loses her snobbery, learns to love Hareton, and wanders the moors with him. In no way is Cathy II’s positive ending “tacked on” – her entire character arc is structured to be the opposite of her mother’s tragedy.

I understand why some people don’t care for the ending and think it feels anti-climactic or out of place. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a thoroughly effective ending and fully consistent with what came before.

#wuthering heights #meta #emily bronte #heathcliff #catherine linton #hareton earnshaw #tw: death #tw: abuse #literature

[finnishcrimestory]

Double murder in Lammi

On 25th of October 1958 a man named Aarre Lampinen had plans to go visit his 74 year old mother Aleksandra and 43 year old sister Eeva in their farm located in Lammi. He decided to call first, but when no one answered, he sensed something was wrong and hurried to the place with his car.

He arrived around 2 pm and noticed Aleksandra laying on the yard. At first he thought she had gotten some sort of a seizure, but very soon her horrible fate became clear to him. From inside the house he found Eeva laying on a puddle of blood. Both of them had been murdered with an edged weapon. Aarre soon called for a doctor and a rural police chief.

When the police arrived they immediately started to investigate. Important thing was to find out what the murder weapon had been. The police heard that from a house nearby an axe had went missing, but it’s not clear if that turned out to be significant. They also tried to figure out the exact time of the murder. On the fateful day, cows had already been milked but autopsy revealed that the victims hadn't yet eaten breakfast. Couple containers of milk were cooling in a bucket near the well. 

(People investigating the well in hopes of finding the murder weapon.)

The police interrogated over 1 000 people, made some arrests and even one local farmer became a suspect. Later he was declared innocent. The investigation didn't really go anywhere and time passed. The family of Aleksandra and Eeva promised 150 000 Finnish marks to the one who would give the hint that would solve the case. It made many people contact the police but nothing important was revealed. Even some clairvoyants offered their help.

Revelation

In Spring 1961 a police was called to a house near Aleksandra’s farm to calm down an argument between a married couple. When the police asked what was the argument about, the woman, named Annikki told that it was about a bottle of liquor. Her husband however told that it was because he knew too much about the murder in Aleksandra’s farm. Later, Annikki tried to commit suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. When she was hurried to the hospital, people were able to pick up some interesting things from her disorderly speech. These things led to the arrest of her 22 year old sister, Irma Vuorinen. She was interrogated for the first time on 25th of April 1961 in Rovaniemi, later also in Tampere.

Irma was from Lammi as well, but she had moved to Sodankylä, Lapland because she met her partner (from what I’ve understood they weren’t married) who apparently was from there. She had three children at the time of her arrest (two of them with her partner). On 24th of October 1958 she had came to Lammi to visit her family. At first she denied murdering Aleksandra and Eeva, but very soon she confessed. 

First she explained that she had went to purchase eggs from Aleksandra and Eeva. She told she had taken this little axe with her because she wanted to cut some spruce branches, so they could later be put on a porch steps (if it’s icy outside they prevent people from slipping).  Aleksandra didn’t sell her the eggs because Irma only had 260 Finnish marks and the eggs cost 300 Finnish marks. Irma tried to buy the eggs into debt, but Aleksandra denied this as well because Irma already owed her 3 000 Finnish marks. She also added that Irma was “tainted” because she had illegitimate children. According to Irma the speech had hurt her very much and she had gotten furious. Then she had fetched the axe from outside and hit Alexandra on the head with it. She murdered Eeva as well when she had told that she would tell everything to Aarre. 

During the interrogation in Tampere, Irma changed her story. Now she told that she had went to borrow 10 000 Finnish marks from Aleksandra. When she had left around 10 am, she had took her father’s axe with her so that she could take the money any means necessary. She told she left the axe outside when she entered the house. After a while Eeva went outside and this is when Irma asked Aleksandra if she would loan the money. Aleksandra said she doesn’t have that much money. Irma went outside and fetched the axe. Aleksandra denied loaning the money to Irma multiple times, and then Irma decided to use the axe and hit Aleksandra with it. When Eeva had said the thing that she would tell Aarre, had Irma also hit her with the axe. After murdering them she rummaged through their cabinets looking for the money, but had to leave empty handed.

Irma left the house cutting through a forest. In the forest there was a small pond in which Irma washed her bloody hands. She also threw the axe in to the pond. Annikki told the police that Irma had been away all morning and when she came back she didn’t tell where she had been. She had the branches with her and she put them on the steps as she had planned. Annikki and their mother had also noticed some red stains on Irma’s dress. "Berry juice", was Irma’s response. 

On the next day, the murders had already been discovered. According to Annikki, Irma had only laughed a bit when hearing about them. During that day, the police arrived to their house to interrogate them. Irma had been washing her clothes and told that she didn’t know anything about the murders. However, Annikki and their mother had already started to suspect Irma indeed had something do to with the murders. However they weren’t sure about it, which is why they didn’t say anything to the police. Irma then spent another week in Lammi and then left home to Sodankylä.

Everyone in Lammi and Sodankylä were shocked to hear who the murderer was. Irma had been living a completely normal life and hadn't told anyone about the case. Though, according to her partner from time to time she had seemed to be a little restless and had stayed up late just aimlessly walking around the house. Irma’s family was also very shocked. According to Annikki’s husband, Irma had always been cheerful and brisk, but when she got mad she got furious. "What could be the purpose for all of this?", cried Irma’s mother when the press interviewed her.

Trial

In June 1961 district court of Hollola sentenced Irma to penitentiary for life for two murders. She was also sentenced to lose her civic confidence forever. The court didn't believe Irma’s explanation that she had murdered the two women just on a whim. The court saw that she had went to the house with an axe to indeed borrow money, and she was determined to get the money, no matter what. Irma was also sentenced for attempt of robbery. The district court denied Irma’s plea to be mentally evaluated.

The sentencing was rare in Finland, as so was the murder itself. Irma became the fourth female inmate who was serving a life sentence. This sentencing however didn’t acquire legal standing and the case went to be handled in court of appeals. Now the mental evaluation was also conducted in Lapinlahti hospital. The shortened version goes as follows: “Irma is normal build, prone to lying and she doesn’t have emotional durability. She doesn’t use alcohol, but she is eager to get married. She is very particular of her appearance, but self-conscious and untrustworthy character. She is moody and she has strong affects. Her intellect is basic average level, IQ 90. Her understanding of reality breaks off easily. While committing the deed she wasn’t criminally responsible, nor was she mentally ill.”

In May 1962 the court of appeals of Turku sentenced her again. Irma couldn't be held criminally responsible. She was sentenced to 15 years in penitentiary and she lost her civic confidence for 15 years.

#true crime #finnish crime #lammin kaksoismurha #double murder #solved #historical murder

[theteej]

on white performative anxiety on election night

Ok, here we go. I had decided that I would not watch the election results unfold last night because quite frankly--it was clear that it would be a close race, and just like with sports games it takes a particular type of narcissistic imagining to think that constant watching will change the impact of an event simply because you watch it.  Also, this isn't a sports game--it's people's lives.  So I ordered a pizza and worked through three unread X-Men collections (decent, by the way--especially the new take on Marauders).

By 8pm I was getting frequent texts, and despite putting my phone in another room, i heard the buzzing enough to get me off the couch. I logged onto social media to see a flood of white Democrats having a complete meltdown as if the election had been called.  And that same existential dread/despair cataclysmically reverberating across social media in New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia.  I was so confused.  What the actual fuck were people upset about?  He hadn't conceded. Most states hadn't been called.  The responses felt so much like being in high school or college where I'd studied for exams and felt reasonably prepared but then got overwhelmed in the psychic energy of performed anxiety/fear/studying that everyone did around finals.  Hell, in pre-covid times I had to limit my time on campus as a professor in the last week because the palpable miasma of fear/anxiety/performative freaking out was too much for me, even though I WAS JUST GRADING THE FINALS. Honestly, I was baffled.  Why were people like this?  They knew that Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania were not going to count their early voting polls first, and the in person would screw Republican.  WHY WERE THEY FREAKING OUT?

And then it slowly dawned on me.  They really had believed their own lies.  They thought there was going to be a magical, massive blue wave of repudiation of President Trump, after the xenophobia, the racism, the wanton cruelty, the vicious fascism.  They needed to believe that this moment would redeem them, this electoral moment would fix them.  And they were mourning, almost disproportionately, this sense of utter collapse.  They were treating the reality of the closeness of the election as somehow equivalent to the idea of a Trump re-election victory.  What the actual hell.

I started to see a lot of "I can't believe it's even this close" statuses.  I put down my pizza in annoyance and kept reading.  There were so many variations on the time-honoured "this is not who we are" canard so many people tell themselves about America. People were mourning, in real time, the lie they'd told themselves.  There was a fundamental believe that Trumpism, the vile populism and toxic mix of racism and other oppressive elements, was an "aberration" that could be corrected.  There was a willing disbelief that this was not part of the very core of this country, that 'America' as a concept is a bad place--one made entirely possible through enslavement and genocide and one that was absolutely fixable through a simple electoral action.  And it's wild, because that's never been the case.  Not now, not ever.  I remember in 2008, being overwhelmed by white people wanting to celebrate Obama with me, but I was also keenly aware of racism and the fact that my own state had just voted to take away same-sex marriage.  Dr. Jim Barrett, a professor in my graduate program at Illinois, stopped me, a new, black graduate student who he didn't know, and said, "isn't the election great?" and i said, "I'm from California, and I'm more worried also about how easily people can dismiss queer rights."  He paused for a second, and then said, "but we did it this time with Obama!"  Here was a full-grown man with a PhD in American history casually telling a black graduate student (WHOSE NAME HE DID NOT EVEN KNOW) how great it was to be able to absolve oneself of responsibility via an electoral process, and to imagine an America without self-criticism, just redemption.

And that's what was at the heart of this baffling pre-capitulation, one that exceeded even the easy stereotype of the always-losing Democrats.  BIDEN HADN'T EVEN LOST. He had (and as of now still) leads in electoral votes! But everyone was moaning, gnashing teeth, and grieving.  But what they were really grieving was their own innocence.  Their naïve assumption that they could be the heroes in a story, in a history of violence that was expressly built for them, even if they wanted to deny it.  Trumpism sells a fantasy of white revanchism, of recovery, and even those whites who imagine otherwise can't exorcise it via a ballot because the entire system of it is at its core, still violent and racist.  Y'all seriously wanted a parade, a movement repudiating this.  What America do you live in?  Did we not go through the same black summer?  Of course we didn't.  You saw this summer as a moment of profound alliance building and a recapturing of a mythical value of inclusion.  We saw it with surprise--oh white people either just realized that black lives are cheap, or they were sufficiently bothered/bored enough to perform about it.

So much of this is a navel-gazing performance of anxiety.  2016 was traumatizing for people who didn't want to think Trumpism was America, but it IS.  And it's done in your name.  

This morning, I saw even more of this.  A friend and colleague wrote a lengthy status about her anxiety about it all and hope that 'good' would prevail, and bemoaned the lack of a real wave of change.  A friend, family member, or colleague of theirs immediately commented with pro-Trump sloganeering.  And she did nothing.  She kept commenting.  This broke me for a second.  How could she not see what a joke all of this was? What she was?  Here she was bemoaning a lack of some sort of prelapsarian goodness, trying to make some sort of "we'll get through this message," and she couldn't even see what she was doing.  There was no acknowledgment, no censuring, no pushback, no RESPONSE to the Trump sloganeering, because she could not fathom the idea that this was connected to HER.  The disappointment she felt, that so many people expressed on social media? It was performative, it was a mourning one's inability to distance oneself from genocidal, suicidal logics of all of this populist turpitude.  She couldn't even denounce the very Trumpism on her own fucking wall, in response to her comment.  Of course there was no blue wave, of course there was no rebuking.  Why should there be?  There are no consequences.  Just white folk hoping civility will save them, with the same baffling surety as King Canute commanding the waves to cease lapping at the feet of his throne.  The whole event felt like a farce--people attempting to distance themselves from a violence done in their name by refusing to even pushback against he very violence that endangers millions of people, incarcerates children, kills with impunity.

I feel, once again, like I'm the one person who felt confident for an exam during finals week.  Everyone's freaking the fuck out, performing, demonstrating a goodness, trying to foolishly imagine the country as good.  I think back to March, when black voters in South Carolina made very clear what was going to happen.  White people were not coming to save them.  Electoral legerdemain was not going to happen, there was no last minute deus ex machina.  There was the brutal calculus that many people don't see the fascism as bad, and remain so insulated that they don't care if the brute returns, so much as the lesser peoples are put in their place.  Those black voters saw that their best chance was the utter uninspiring, safe, and milquetoast flavour of whiteness, Joe Biden.  And they were right.  We can push that one, perhaps.  Make changes.  But this was always going to be a bitter slog, and at most, a close thing.  America is a bad place. We cannot redeem it through performance, through simply voting.  We don't exorcise our structural violence with selfies and dashes of ink on sealed papers.

Now that we know this, we can actually push back against the attempted voter fraud that IS happening right now, and then hope that this mediocre blue man wins.  And then maybe y'all can join us in doing the hard, daily work that also involves critically acknowledging our own complicity, investment, and inclusion in a violent, illegitimate space.  We have to live in these contradictions, to push and transform it, and remember that there are no cheat codes here.  Just grinding work, and no cookies or congratulation.

Be fucking better, y'all.

[kaitycole]

The Winner Takes It All

Summary: Some insight on Constantine’s thoughts before he confronts Eleanor and Jackson

Word Count: 1462

Pairings: Constantine x Eleanor, Eleanor x Jackson 

Warnings: Mentions of adultery, illegitimate child, an affair

Song Choice: The Winner Takes It All - ABBA

Part 19.5 of WP. To catch up, read here.

A/N: This is just a piece to give you some deeper look into Constantine and his actual feelings rather than the mask he wore in the previous chapter.

For Constantine, it was true love the moment he laid eyes on Lady Liana Grayden. If he wasn’t bound by tradition, he would’ve cancelled his social season the first night. He knew without a fraction of a doubt that Liana was the woman for him, his queen. When she left him and Leo, Constantine was forced to remember the words his father repeated to him his whole life: Royals don’t get the luxury of marrying for love. That’s when he boarded up his heart and threw himself more into being king than he did a father.

It was about a year after Liana left that the royal council began pestering him about taking another wife; if only for the sole reason of producing a spare. When he finally agreed, he was told about several suitors, though they all agreed to pick someone that could relate better to the people. Someone from a different walk of life, maybe even someone from another country. They decided to pick the daughter of a man Constantine’s father had dealings with and soon a courtship started between the King and Eleanor.

I don't want to talk/ About the things we've gone through Though it's hurting me/ Now it's history

From the beginning, Eleanor was told why he needed to remarry and while he felt those butterflies when with her, Constantine made sure to not let them cloud his judgement. This marriage was simply for convenience, stabilization of the monarchy, and a married king looked stronger than an unwed one. Especially one that had been left in the middle of the night. Eleanor seemed fine with the arrangement, the two might not have been passionately in love, they still shared feelings that resulted in the birth of Liam. The pair was civil and while it wasn’t the story book love most think the throne has, it was nice.

I've played all my cards/ And that's what you've done too Nothing more to say/ No more ace to play

Constantine often found himself wanting to let his walls down, to let her in, but whenever those thoughts crossed his mind the pain of Liana would creep back in. Even when he found out about her miscarriage, he couldn’t allow himself to reach out. Instead he threw himself back into being king and neglected being not only a father but a husband. Then he saw her tear into Barthelemy Beaumont and while he loved every second of it, the fire in her, it was still uncalled for. He messed up that night too, seemingly siding with Beaumont, leaving her alone once again. But what she didn’t know was that he knew she had snuck off to the courtyard to see Jackson, Timothy had reported it to him when he asked for her. His heart cracked a little when he saw their intimate embrace, but he didn’t let himself dwell. But his anger overtook him and he lashed out on her, pushing her even further away.

The winner takes it all/ The loser standing small Beside the victory/ That's her destiny

Weeks passed and he noticed a shift in her behavior, but knew of nothing that could have caused it. Jackson seemed to stay on opposite ends of the palace as her, but other than one embrace, nothing else was reported; Constantine had no reason to distrust either of them. Then he saw her running around with Liam and the other children and he saw her come back to life. He told himself that he had to do better, to let her in, or he’d end up losing her for good. And things seemed to work out for the royal couple; he really saw them as being happy; finally giving her the marriage that she deserved.

I was in your arms/ Thinking I belonged there/ I figured it made sense Building me a fence/ Building me a home/ Thinking I'd be strong there

The pieces of him that had been broken by Liana were mending the closer he got to Eleanor. He meant every word he said to her, every declaration of love he made, all the times he held her in his arms. Something changed in Constantine after all that, the thought of filling the palace with more heirs brought him a joy he didn’t think he could have. But then the other shoe dropped. The peace treaty with Auvernal was threatened and the fabric of their relationship started to fray. He watched as Eleanor slowly started to pull away from him, his heart broke each time she pulled away from his kiss or she simply ignored him.

But I was a fool/ Playing by the rules The gods may throw a dice/ Their minds as cold as ice And someone way down here/ Loses someone dear

Instead of joining him and their sons at the Portavira summit, she opted to travel to Valtoria: a long-forgotten duchy. He entrusted her safety and care to Jackson, someone he trusted. Someone he personally called to serve in the Kings’ Guard, just as his father and grandfather had. The photographs on his desk proved that to be one of the biggest mistakes Constantine made.

The winner takes it all/ The loser has to fall It's simple and it's plain/ Why should I complain

He looks at them until the images are burned into his mind. There was no disputing what he saw, no way to explain it away. They started off innocent enough; sitting closer than normal, sharing a meal, these were all things Constantine could brush away. But as he flipped through them, the less innocent they became. Each image causes the anger in him to boil until he sees the ones that he can’t ignore. Ones of his wife and guardsman in the throes of passion, shamelessly. He felt sick to his core just thinking of the two as tears threatened to fall.

But tell me does she kiss/ Like I used to kiss you? Does it feel the same/ When she calls your name?

When he asked if Eleanor was pregnant, he was partially joking. While they had been intimate several times, he wasn’t sure if the timeline would fit. But her cravings for sour foods was an identical marker to her pregnancy with Liam and Constantine felt excited for the possibility. Then he saw these photographs and combined with their recent behavior, the chance of him being the father grew increasingly slim and he feels a hatred in him he has never felt before. He had a lot to do, there was a possibility there was another heir, but also the chance of just some bastard of the queen. A better man might have been able to ignore the telltale signs of his wife’s adultery, to just stay married to her by name and remove the guardsman from the palace, royals don’t marry for love after all. But Constantine isn’t a better man, he’s bitter and scorned, scarred from the abrupt loss of his first love, and self-destined to never allow anyone to be close enough to hurt him again.

Somewhere deep inside/ You must know I miss you But what can I say/ Rules must be obeyed

Constantine stands up, flinging the photographs to the floor. As he paces, he starts to wonder if they even had a plan for this abomination of an arrangement they started. If they even thought of the possible outcome of this, a child. He would not allow some bastard a chance to even be in line for the throne, he wouldn’t allow some guardsman’s offspring to tarnish the bloodline of the monarchs before him. But if it was his, he didn’t know how he’d even be able to look at his wife again. Liana just left one night, without a word or warning and it still hurt him to see Leo because when the light caught his blue eyes and blonde hair the right way, he looked just like his mother which broke Constantine’s heart. If he couldn’t look at his own son, how could ever look at someone else’s?

So the winner takes it all/ And the loser has to fall  Throw a dice, cold as ice

With each step he takes, the anger continues to grow until he’s come up with an idea, a plan, to cause them to hurt just the way they had hurt him. This wouldn’t go unpunished, regardless of the paternity test. When he leaves his study, he slams the door and by the time the door clicks behind him, Constantine’s heart has completely hardened. His emotions dead bolted behind a door that no one would ever be able to open.

Way down here, someone dear/ Takes it all, has to fall It seems plain to me

#choices #witness protection #witness protection au fic #the royal romance #trr constantine rys #trr Eleanor rys #trr Jackson walker

[scribeofmorpheus]

Himmeløyne [10/?]

Pairing: Loki Odinson x Reader

Catch Up Here | Masterlist

Warnings: Is it angsty? Angst??? I don’t know anymore.

A/N: Nothin’ to report Cap’n

Taglist is open! Reblog, comment or leave a like please ☺

~Loki

A flash of vibrant colour blotted out his vision. The bi-frost whirred down. Heimdall and Y/N stood where there was nothing prior.

Loki couldn’t think. Solace, and the comfort it brought his aching heart, rushed through him. His lips moved, whether in curse or in reverence he couldn’t tell. His ears were too hot from the adrenaline.

In an instant, he swooped Y/N into his arms and held her flush to him. “I thought I lost you,” he whispered, intimately just so she could hear. “I thought you ran from me.” Those words held sadness.

“I’m alright,” she reassured him. After a shaky breath, she said more confidently: “Better than alright.”

Something had changed in her. That spark—joyful, curious and youthful—the one that had been leeched from her on Niflheim, was back. Almost. Every fibre of his being wanting to meld together with her for eternity somewhere far away.

Y/N breath hitched, her hands hugging him back with less power. Loki pulled away when he realised they were out in the open, being gawked at by Thor, and Sif and The Warriors Three, and his mother. Most frightening of all was the scowl on Heimdall’s face.

Loki stepped aside, hiding his blush with a feigned cough. Heimdall’s throat made a protective noise.

“Oh, Y/N, you gave me quite the scare, child.” Frigga embraced her as a mother would. Loki noticed how much Y/N leaned into the touch—cherished it.

“Next time, give us a little warning before you disappear,” Sif was the next to hug her. Loki saw that there was genuine worry on her face. Hogun, Volstagg and Fandral impeded upon their near sisterly reunion. Bunching up to form a shield of linked arms.

Thor lit up with a devilish grin when it was his turn to hug her. He lifted her high into the air, his bulging muscles barely doing much work. Thor kept his words short and loud: “Little Stormbringer!”

Y/N laughed.

Loki rolled his eyes.

Suddenly, Heimdall’s expression dropped. He looked to the palace with stone-cold eyes. Then, he excused himself: “There’s something I must…answer for.” Frigga walked with him.

As Y/N was being ushered away by the small band of warriors, Loki slipped her a note before teleporting to their spot; the balcony where he’d first kissed her. He wanted to be alone with her. To revel in her presence without prying eyes.

 Loki’s chest was doing cartwheels. His foot jutting from excitement; or was it nervousness. He ran a hand through his hair as he waited to catch Y/N’s scent before she appeared from around a corner. Lavender, something citrusy and a hint of musk—not unpleasant or strong, just…human.

“Loki?” she said his name and his magic threatened to envelop her; to spark across her skin like a static cloud of excitement.

He smiled and looked at her. Her eyes were red from crying.

“What happened?” he asked.

She stuttered, looking at him in a way that told him no one else had asked her why she portal jumped. “I—I found my father.”

Loki’s head lowered. Had it been as I suspected?

“You knew didn’t you?” She peered inquisitive eyes at him. He was surprised to find them without accusation.

He folded his arms over the railing, “I had a hunch. I suppose you pieced together that was the reason for our Game of Fates?”

She hummed a yes.

Loki chuckled, “I never thought, of all the debauchery and merriment that my brother and his band of warriors do, that it’d be Heimdall who’d father an illegitimate child.”

Y/N sucked air in through closed teeth. He realised he offended her some. Curse his scholarly brain and its different ways.

“I didn’t mean it to be an insult,” he clarified. “I just found it—”

“Humorous?” she asked. “You and I both.”

Loki looked at her for the longest moment, her side profile burning into his memories to be kept there forever.

“Did you find any answers where you went?” Loki asked.

“Some. Not all,” a weak smile tugged on her lips. “I have a father now. I mean…I’ve always had one, I just never…”

“Had one,” he said in understanding. Odin, for all his benevolence, was not the most present parental figure in Loki’s childhood.

“There were no signs of life,” she said sadly. “No villagers. Not even the Jotuns that attacked. Simply outlines of things.” After a pause, she looked at him with a curious streak to her expression. “Do gods get sick?”

He refrained from laughing. He hadn’t expected that question. “Yes, we get sick. We grow old and we even die. My kind are only seen as gods by those who live shorter lives. Why do you ask?”

“Heimdall said you had a sickness once, years ago. My great-grandmother was summoned to cure you after a Jotun attack,” Y/N scoffed with no amusement to it. “Seems my family has a long history of entanglements with god-kind.”

Loki frowned, having no recollection of her tale. Perhaps Heimdall remembered it wrong. His mind grew loud with confusion, but then stopped when he heard Y/N sniffle.

“Maybe it was fate,” she took a deep inhale of the playful wind carrying nigh-bloom scents from the vines. “Maybe the destruction of my village was the price of my family’s gifts.”

Loki inched closer towards her. “I promise you, we will find the reason for the attack. I won’t rest until you find some peace,” he swore, genuine and true.

“Why would you do that for me?” She asked, tugging her hair behind her ear. There was no logic behind the move, the wind simply ruffled it again. It was a habit, a beautifully awkward habit.  “Am I not just a curious thing to you?” She said those last words with no emotion. Stating it like a fact.

Loki grew angry. More with his past self for being so callous with his explanation in the library.

“You have no idea do you?” He whispered. “Still?”

She narrowed her beautiful eyes, “No idea of?”

He shut his eyes, trying to find stable ground. He told himself he’d wait, hold back after how their last emotional confrontation ended.

Then her hand touched his and Loki’s body grew hot.

She moved in closer, “Loki, why did you ask me here?”

“Forgive me,” he whispered with no remorse.

For what—”

He pulled her flush to his chest again, more hungry with need this time. Inching her body back towards the coldness of the vine-covered walls. His lips crashed over hers fervently. The softness of her mouth was like satin…Loki moaned as he remembered the dream; of her beneath him, in his emerald sheets.

He had to anchor himself—keep himself from losing control. He grabbed onto a vine to have something to pull. She kissed him back, not as hungry, but still willing. That spurred him on. Without thinking it, his hips jutted forward, somehow managing to find an opening between her legs.

She moaned and it sounded deliciously sinful to his ears. By the sacred tree, it sounded better than his dreams. He strained beneath his trousers, vines snapping from his grip when some of her magic spilled into their kiss. It was blissful; an intoxicating mix of fire and sensitivity. Through their intertwined magics, Loki could feel her straining for him too—beneath her clothes.

He moaned and angled her head so he could deepen their kiss. Then, out of breath, he demanded of her: “Never leave my side again.”

“Loki…” she tried to get a word in. He didn’t want to lose this moment to words. “Loki, wait.”

He clenched his jaw, blown pupils taking in her deliciously lewd look; heavy eyelids, flush cheeks, rustled hair tangling in the vines, slick and full lips.

“We can’t,” she placed a hand on his chest.

He scoffed at her words, “I’m a prince of Asgard, we can damn well do whatever we please, pet.”

She shuddered from the sound of her new pet-name. Loki smirked.

“Your father,” she protested.

Loki’s hand found its way to the small of her back, “My father should be the last person on your mind right now.”

The boots of a guard echoed from down the hallway. Y/N’s grew wide from fear of discovery. Loki on the other hand found excitement.

His hips jutted again, this time she bit her lip to keep her moan silent. Her magic snaked off her fingertips and travelled into him again. This time the energy found its way to his hardening member and Loki stifled his throaty moan with another kiss. A strange tingle travelling through his body from the residual effects. When he opened his eyes, the skin on his fingers hand flashed into and out of a familiar blue colour.

Loki knit his eyebrows, his mind churning with the mechanisms of thought.

“In the library, why did you ask about portal magic?” He placed his hands on her cheeks so she could look him in the eye.

Y/N was still flustered, still in the euphoria of the moment.

“Y/N, focus for me, it’s important,” he steeled his gaze and she swallowed loudly.

“I—I thought that the Jotuns had tracked your magic, like how your mother and Heimdall managed to open a portal to retrieve us from Niflheim. But that magic only works if you know the signature of the caster.”

“And how would the Jotuns know to look for my signature.” It wasn’t a question, but a realisation.

Was our encounter completely by chance? He questioned himself. Was I always fated to be drawn to her? He looked at Y/N’s face. He had no explanation to give. And above all, he had no right to be near her. Was it truly curiosity?

“What’s wrong?” she asked, but Loki could barely hear her. His mind was far away.

He looked down at his hands, remembering both instances when Y/N’s magic had turned them blue. Remembering the weirdly powerful magical pull he felt towards her in the forest. Remembering how the Jotuns only attacked after he went to Midgard. His mind suddenly snapped him somewhere else.

He stumbled before gathering his wits. He was in the library. With a wave of his hand, several books began flying off the shelf towards the table. Pages rustling so loud it sounded like an avalanche.

Frigga’s magic tried to connect with his. No doubt she sensed something astray. He blocked her off completely. Sealing himself inside the library.

Over and over again, he muttered to himself: “It’s my fault.”

#loki #loki x reader #loki x you #loki imagine #loki odinson #loki mcu #thor #sif #Warriors Three #odin #tom hiddelston imagine

[antibioware]

My final thoughts on Mass Effect: Andromeda (a 3 years late review)

So I spent the past week and a half playing a game I paid 13€ for, one that I promised myself I wouldn't touch but that in the end I gave a solid try to anyway, because I was willing to give Andromeda the benefit of the doubt. Because I'm aware that sometimes I'm a bitch, and that the Mass Effect trilogy had its own problems too, but I still regard it as one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

It wasn't as bad as I had expected it would be, but that doesn't make it good. Above all else, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a game that could have been interesting, had the creators actually cared to make something out of it outside of just “Dragon Age Inquisition in the Mass Effect universe”.

I wanted to write a more coherent post about what I didn’t like about it, aside from just shitting all over it like I’ve been feeling like doing since the canonical bury your gays in the game slapped me in the face. So here it is, an overlong post about a 3 years old game.

Before getting into the main elements that I disliked, I wanna preface this post by saying that I enjoyed parts of the game. The main characters, while not as well characterized as they could have been (no Bioware character ever is), grew on me the more I played the game, and by the end were the main reason why I kept playing. Unlike DA:I, the writers did a really good job building up the found family trope in this game, and while it turns corny at times, it’s very heartwarming. I think many of the planetary settings in Heleus were stunning to look at, to the point that I didn’t even mind all that much having to drive from point A to point B.

I didn’t hate the game, and I’m speaking from the point of view of someone who enjoyed it, but not enough to simply accept its many flaws.

The problems with the gameplay itself

There are three main things that I don’t think work well and are up in your face since the first seconds of the game: the game interface, the fight mechanics, and the open world aspect of the game.

◦ The first impact I had on Andromeda, right from the first 2/3 hours of playing it, was that it was very cluttered and very, very confusing. I had just finished playing ME3 and I had issues understanding how to move without having a proper map onscreen, how to read throught the thousand tutorials for the 100 new, useless elements they added to the game that are either reused from ME1 or taken directly from DA:I. The game didn’t need a crafting system, especially not one DIVIDED IN TWO DIFFERENT SECTIONS, it didn’t need an inventory system, and especially it didn't need to have the sheer amount of sidequest it had.

◦ The fight mechanics + leveling up/classes system is a hot mess. I understand they wanted to try something new, and in part they did make the fighting feel more fluid, but not being able to rely on teammates for necessary stuff like overloads/specific powers that you need during fights severely impaired the strategic element of the game. Now it’s just a third person shooter with teammates dying left and right because you have 0 control on how they fight, aside from putting them in one place or another.

The fact that you can only use 3 powers at the time is a consequence of the confusing leveling up system. Because you can have an endless amount of powers you can give your character, they needed to find a way to make them not too overpowered. The problem is…. You had more powers to use in-game in ME1. It doesn’t work so well.

When the fighting mechanics in ME3, a game that came out in 2012, feel way fluider and more enjoyable than the ones from the game that came out in 2017, something is very wrong.

◦ Open world games are a challenge, because too many developers don’t understand that turning a game into an open world doesn’t make it good, it just makes it bigger and slower. It was a problem with Dragon Age Inquisition, and it’s a problem here with Andromeda - with the only good aspect being that at least Andromeda gives you a decent car to explore the planets.

ME1 had some level of open world-ness, and there was a valid reason why ME2 and ME3 got rid of the concept: the maps you’re given are a big, cluttered mess of nothing. You have several thousands sidequests, many of which incredibly similar to each other, and nothing fucking else. Sometimes you will accidentally stumble upon something interesting, and then return to a 6 hours drive into the nothingness that keeps repeating over and over again.

It got to the point I almost stumbled upon the endgame because I got exhausted of running around doing errands, and I tried continuing the main plot, only to realize I was almost done with it. That was it.

Empty self-referencing

This is the term I used to describe my girlfriend why the way the game made call backs to the previous games bothered me so much. Call backs aren’t new to the concept of the game (the Mass Effect trilogy literally lived on characters returning from previous games, referencing things that had previously happened, etc.), but because this game wanted to be a separate thing from the ME trilogy, it couldn’t use this sort of material. And that’s completely fine! The game wanted to be its own thing, I was happy about it at first, because the trilogy was over and done for. If Mass Effect was indeed gonna continue, it needed a fresh start.

The problem is, it also needed to remind players that it’s a Mass Effect game, the game from which Commander Shepard came.

So, how to solve this matter? Well, instead of referencing stuff that actually happened in the trilogy, it solves the referencing aspect by putting a bunch of relatives of characters from the trilogy in the game. You get Conrad Verner’s sister, Nyreen Kandros’s cousin, a lost illegitimate son of Zaeed Massani, a brief cameo of Garrus Vakarian’s dad, a krogan on New Tuchanka being from clan Urdnot, and so on. And it was funny the first time or so, maybe even the second, but at some point it just turned awkward, and I started asking myself, “is this it? Is this all that’s left of the trilogy, just a bunch of big name characters to remind the player you belong from the same universe?”. The brief way they referenced back to Shepard was also very awkward and felt... out of place, with the rest of the game.

A couple call backs I really liked were:

Liara being acknowledged for her work as a Prothean researcher and being in contant with Ryder Senior, without much reference being done to her time in Shepard’s crew. It was good, seeing her from an outsider perspective.

The fact that Avitus Rix, being a turian ex-Spectre, knew Saren and was in fact his disciple.

Both these elements are things that make sense and tie the game back to the trilogy beyond just going “hey, this x character is the relative of this other x character, isn’t it crazy!”

The plot, and the problem with binary choices

It’s easy to make fun or critique the game struggling to find its own plot after something as big as the ME trilogy was. But Bioware isn’t an indie developer, it’s a huge fucking company, and they could have done better.

While I liked the design of the Remnants architecture and enemies, putting a plot point revolving around an ancient, long lost alien civilization who was much more technologically advanced, sounds a lot like a bad repeat of the Protheans.

I liked the Angara conceptually, but I didn’t like their design all that much and I often found it hysterically funny that angara are supposed to be a deeply emotional race, when the animators left them stuck with those mono expressive faces and unemotional eyes.

And on top of all of this, the kett are boring villains. The exaltation progress is really just a bad repeat of how Reaper indoctrination worked, and the way they talk reminds me of the big bad templars from the Dragon Age universe. It’s literally nothing new, and because of it, it’s boring.

When I was playing the endgame, all I kept thinking was “this is it? this is all they came up with? for real?”. I liked the twins aspect of the endgame, but aside from that, it didn’t feel satisfying.

And now comes the reason why it didn’t feel satisfying: the game got rid of the Paragon/Renegade system from the trilogy, and because of that, they also got rid of the possibility of additional problem-solving solutions during big choices. 

In Andromeda, almost every major quest has a binary choice attached to it: choose this or that. Burn the facility or save all the angara but leave the facility standing. Save the krogans or Raeka. Pick Sloane or Reyes. Keep Sarissa as the Pathfinder or not. Etc.

in the trilogy, complete, important binary choices were rare (choosing Ashley or Kaidan is probably the biggest one) and the consequences had long lasting effects. Not all of them did (saving or killing the rachni in ME1 and rewriting or destroying the geth in ME2 didn’t have so many long term consequences in ME3, for example), but a great deal meant big changes in the following games.

The issues with these choices in Andromeda? None of them matter. Characters will get angry at you for going against their will in a single dialogue line, and then never mention it again. The opinion on the Nexus won’t change if you expose Spender, Addison’s connections to the Exiles, or Nexus people targeting the angara. None of your companions will betray you or leave you for going against their will during their loyalty missions.

A Mass Effect game with choices that don’t influence the final result of the game feels like a joke, and while I know in many ways the trilogy also had a problem on this matter on some parts, dead characters stayed dead and betraying a friend’s trust meant losing them in the near future

The unavoidable part where I mention the issue with LGBT rep in this game because I’m a nonbinary lesbian and I can’t detach that aspect of myself from how I consume media

Endless gays and trans folks out there have already written this sort of matter so as my last point of critique, I’ll make it quick. Bioware has a long story with homophobia and transphobia in its character writing - this without mentioning the huge problems with racism in the character writing, too. Many gay/bi women in Bioware games are written by the same homophobic straight cis man with a lesbo fetish, AKA Lukas Kristjanson, and that alone gives a really good feeling on why such issues exist.

The original Mass Effect trilogy had very little gay romance options, out of the amount of romance options: as of ME3, there are two main gay romance options for fShepard (Liara and Traynor, without counting the mini-romances that were put in the previous games for pure fetish fuel) and two for mShepard (Kaidan and Cortez, both only added in the last game).

Andromeda wasn’t... the big breath of fresh air in the representation department they tried to pass it as. There are more romance options, but for once, there add to add another m/m romance option later on because the only gay romance available were with minor NPCs, and there’s an issue with the amount of content gay romances get compared to main het romances.

There’s a single trans NPC, and it's a random person you meet who tells you her deadname and the reason she transitioned right away. Ugh.

And now we come to the bury your gays mission that made me almost uninstall the game: the mission to find the turian Pathfinder with the help of his partner, the previously mentioned Avitus Rix,  who also happens to be the first gay male turian character in the game (the first gay female turian being Nyreen Kandros, who dies btw). You invest time to trace back to the turian arc, while listening to Avitus talk about how important the turian Pathfinder is to him, you realize pretty fast they’re lovers, and when you find out the turian arc, it’s all to discover that the Pathfinder is already dead. Not a choice in the game that could accidentally kill him, like with Raeka, or an active choice you make to keep him in his role, like Sarissa. He’s already dead, and you’re left with Avitus alone and mourning.

The game is from 2017. This sort of bullshit is unacceptable, and I will keep screaming it until Bioware manages to pretend like they care about their LGBT fans.

To end this mess of a post - Mass Effect: Andromeda lasted me a total of 50 hours of game, and in a way, I’m glad I got it out of my system. It was a delusion, but at least now I can cross it off my list and go back to playing other stuff. I understand that this is a game many ended up liking, and I’m sad I can’t say I’m among them, and that I couldn’t even fully enjoy the game at times. Also I promised myself I wouldn’t mention this but goddamn the facial animations of the game were so ugly.

DESPITE THIS, I really loved the characters, and I very much enjoyed Vetra’s romance, which was the main reason why I bought the game. 

#long fucking post ahead beware #mass effect #mass effect andromeda #me:a

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Hello! I’m a big fan of your blog and I’ve got a question for you. Consider an AU where Daemon Blackfyre is born from Aegon IV having an affair with Rhaena rather than Daena, how do you think he’d turn out? I’m curious on your thoughts as to how having a different parentage might change Daemon.

Hello! I’m glad you’re enjoying reading my blog :) 

The scenario you propose is one I haven’t thought of because Rhaena is far and away the least developed of the Targaryen characters of her generation. I’m not going to say “she would never have an affair” because as it stands most of the information on her is from semi- or non-canon sources: the 2006 SSM and the MUSH RPG tree that reveals she was the sister Daeron I betrothed to the Sealord of Braavos. She gets about one and a half sentences to herself in The World of Ice and Fire, which itself contradicts some of the information in the SSM: the SSM states that she never chafed at her confinement whereas twoiaf says she protested Baelor’s Maidenvault along with her sisters; depending on which one is true (for obvious reasons, I prefer the universe where she doesn’t agree with being imprisoned for a decade), leads to vastly different interpretations of the character. We know more about Rhaena’s breast size (that they were fuller than Daena’s at 14; thanks a lot, George) than her interactions with her siblings and cousins. All we know for sure is that she was pious and became a septa later in life.

The question is then whether Rhaena would still become a septa if she had a child, or be like Elaena and have to leave him behind (it’s nearly impossible from what we know about illegitimate children of noblewomen that Elaena brought Jon and Jeyne Waters with her to Plumm lands). If Rhaena did become a septa soon after Daemon’s birth and Aegon’s ascension, and left him as a baby to be raised by Daena (as I think might’ve happened with the Waters twins), then perhaps not much would change: Daemon is still raised mostly by the Targaryen-loving Daena, who probably encouraged his athletic pursuits, and spends time training with master-at-arms and Aegon IV’s ally, Quentyn Ball.

Daemon might’ve felt unloved by Rhaena in the “why didn’t she stay with me?” sense that some of the illegitimate children feel in asoiaf (thinking about Jon Snow’s fantasies of his “beautiful, highborn, kind-eyed” mother, and he had a decently happy childhood in Winterfell). Since in canon Baelor starved himself to death "in penance” for Daena’s child, switching the sister to Rhaena could have devastating psychological effects for the both of them, since the SSM implies she and Baelor were close (that her piety was influenced by Baelor, and even twoiaf compares her piety to his); a plausible scenario could be Rhaena joining a motherhouse and leaving her child as a form of penance, as she blames herself for Baelor’s death. 

Without Daena’s loving act of self-sacrifice by refusing to name the father at the cost of her reputation, and instead an absent mother mourning the death of her jailer “Baelor the Beloved”, Daemon might’ve even felt unwanted despite Daena’s best efforts (again, thinking of Jon Snow, who still internalized the “bastard prejudices” despite having a loving father and half-siblings). So perhaps a Daemon-son-of-absentee Rhaena is a little sadder, more jaded from early childhood, and less willing to get hurt reaching out to abrasive family members (by which I mean Aegor and Brynden Rivers).

But supposing Rhaena does put off becoming a septa to raise her son (and you could argue that sewing the Mother’s face on her clothing indicates that, like Aelinor Penrose, she did want children) and successfully opposes Viserys and Aegon’s attempts to marry her off (as Daena did. GRRM’s SSM says Rhaena was “meek and passive”, but I’m going with the twoiaf version that stands up for her freedom). Considering what happened to Falena Stokeworth at Viserys II’s hands for daring to have sex with Aegon IV, I’ll assume that she refuses to name Aegon IV as the father. 

A Daemon raised by Rhaena at King’s Landing would perhaps be more openly interested in fashion; Rhaena loved to sew and embroider, and I could see him taking an interest in this because his mother was and encouraged him. We’re not sure how pious Daemon was in canon (although according to his supporters, he was blessed by the Seven), but as Rhaena’s child he might be more so, and might’ve wanted to serve the Warrior’s Sons instead of the Kingsguard as a boy. It might even be possible that as in the real-life example of Princess Rotrude daughter of Charlemagne and her illegitimate son Louis, that he could’ve followed Rhaena into the Faith and become part of a guard for a particularly high-ranking Septon. 

However, I don’t think this Daemon’s new interests would have made Aegon stop being interested in him, especially after Aegor and Brynden proved to be “unsuitable heirs”; and I don’t think they would’ve endeared the grudge-prone Da3ron II to him either. So I don’t think their schemes regarding Daemon would’ve changed.

What I think the most important change in Daemon’s character would be having Rhaena as a mother is that he’s introduced earlier on to the Targaryen legacy is not a shining ideal to protect. Rhaena is the only known Targaryen to have abandoned their name for a higher calling by choice, rather than being given to the Faith or Citadel by her parents or married off (although they technically are still part of the Targaryen House) or forced to run away. Most of the Targaryen women are proud to be born of the house of “fire and blood” and dragons, but unlike Daena and even Elaena, Rhaena did not have any explicit connection to that legacy. Daemon knowing that his mother could’ve become a septa and give up her name, seeing her honoring the Mother and the Maiden over Rhaenys and Visenya, having her tell him tales of the Warriors’ Sons over those of brave Targaryen warriors, would have radically changed his idea of who the Targaryens are. With that he might be more open to criticism of Targaryen brutality and egotism, at least with regards to burning septs and trying to rewrite the laws of the Faith to suit their own ends (Jaehaerys and the Doctrine of Exceptionalism allowing incest, Baelor’s misogynist laws on chastity and moving the Faith’s capital to King’s Landing where they became a tool of the Targaryens). That might result in a Daemon that doesn’t hold onto Blackfyre and his sigil as symbols of identity and strength, but the chivalric code and Faith precepts. That might have serious political implications if the reason why he rebelled (if rebel he did, and wasn’t just arrested based on a rumor) had something to do with Aegon IV and Da3ron II making a mockery of the Targaryen legacy as related to him by Daena.

tl;dr depending on whether or not Rhaena was there to raise him, I think were she his mother Daemon may have been more wary of the Targaryens as a family and his place among them as an illegitimate prince. He may have cultivated different interests that Rhaena encouraged, and might have been more outwardly serious and guarded at court. Whether that meant he’d be less popular or less effective in combat is anyone’s guess, but I don’t think Aegon’s plans and Da3ron II’s counter-plans for him would’ve changed much.

#ask #what if #asoiaf #asoiaf headcanon #daemon blackfyre #Rhaena Targaryen #house targaryen

[cypher-of-the-night]

Biography: Yuuichi Kuroi

“Between going to hell for killing leeches, or to heaven at the cost of innocent lives... I’d rather stay a sinful man for the rest of my life.”

~

Full name: Kuroi, Yuuichi

Kanji: 黒佑一

Age: 19

Meaning:  Yuuichi - To help one; Kuroi - Black, Dark

Nickname(s):

Sensei (by Yui),

Yuuichi Jiang (Alias)

Yòu-Yī  Jiang (Chinese Name)

Age: 19 (Looks around early 20′s)

Birthday: April 1st

Zodiac Sign: Aries

Ethnicity: Chinese/Japanese

Nationality: Japanese

Hobbies: Hunting, Practicing Martial Arts

Favorite Food: Cream Stew

Dislikes: Days-Off, Vampires, and Ignorance

Race: Vampire, Human (Formerly)

Gender: Male

Height: 178 cm (5’10")

Weight: 67 kg (147 lbs)

Hair color: Black

Eye color: Blue

Blood Type: O

Occupation: High School Teacher-in-Training, Vampire Hunter

Relatives:

Ying-Yue Jiang (ancestral foremother)

Naoki Enjo (Distant Relative)

Hisoka Kuroi (First-Cousin, Arranged fiancée)

Tsurara Kuroi (Parental Grandmother)

Favorite Food: Cream Stew

Hobbies: Hunting, Practicing Martial Arts

Seiyuu: Satoshi Hino (Ao from Hakkenden (Talking /Singing)

English Voice: Greg Cote (Eita Izumi from Just Because) (Talking)

~

Personality:

To the public eye, Yuuichi is a cool, collected young genius. At the age of 13, He graduates from college and is mentioned to be friendless, as he distances himself from others ever since childhood; Only having his cousin as his only other companion growing up. As he was always quiet, people found Yuuichi intimidating as he would be the only one brave enough to stare down and talk back at the Sakamaki’s, the Mukami’s, and even the Tsukinami’s; Something not even the Principal could do. Yuuichi is also observant and strict, even catching Ayato cheating but never calls him out on it; This leads to him and Ayato having a rather antagonistic relationship.

However, Yuuichi’s cool front is actually a mask, revealing himself to be passionate, but broken young man, desperately looking for love, affection, acceptance, and acknowledgment. Having grown up in a family of Vampire Hunters, Yuuichi has learned to kill vampires since he was young; While he was exceptional in this field, Yuuichi always had to live up to high expectations and was forced to distance himself from others to protect them from getting involved with his life as a Vampire hunter. He cares dearly about innocent people, but felt he must put them at a distance to keep them safe from harm. Always feeling that he must carry the burden on his own, Yuuichi bottles up his emotions in order to continue his role as a protector to innocent humans. He also has a soft spot for children, especially orphans, as he himself is an orphan.

While it was never reciprocated, Yuuichi did hold romantic feelings for his cousin, Hisoka, ever since they were children; Even before their arranged engagement. However, while he has tried to win her heart, it was apparent that She never loved him anymore than a brother. This is due to growing up believing he was a mistake by their grandmother, as he was born as an illegitimate child to the Kuroi family, and that Hisoka was the first person that has treated him as if his existence wasn’t a mistake and that he felt validated by her. This is also why he was not the family heir, despite being the oldest. He also developed a self-hatred and a case of PTSD from having to undergo harsh training as a Vampire hunter, losing his family members, to the abusive treatment from his grandmother.

Due to the way he grew up in the organization and his own hatred towards vampires, Yuuichi feels no remorse in killing the blood-sucking creatures and strongly believes that they are beasts in human form that deserve nothing more than to be extinct. While he genuinely feels that way, it only adds in his self-hatred and disgust for allowing himself become a vampire just to survive when he would rather die. As a vampire hunter, he also knows tactics to torture someone and do what ever means necessary to get the job done; Even it meant resorting to manipulation.

While appearing rational, Yuuichi also holds a sadistic side from the influence of being a vampire and would have the tendencies to succumb to vamperic urges along with his own desires; Depending on which route he’s in, He can either succumb to insanity, forcibly take what he wants as a desperate attempt to find his own happiness, and die as a tragic man, or He can be taught that he can love and be loved healthily, that he must pick up the broken pieces in order to find happiness, and to live as the avenging survivor.

~

Strengths:

Highly intelligent, respectful to elders, goal-oriented, protective, observant, a realist, serious, mysterious, cool, calm, fast-learner, outspoken when needed to, Caring to children, does show gratitude, strong-willed, kind, athletic, knowledgeable, passionate, experienced, and faithful.

Flaws: Secretly sadistic (from Vampiric urges), cold, stoic, vengeful, stubborn, persistent, easily lonely, hot-tempered, hostile, emotionally scarred, secretive, mentally scarred, self-hatred, has a hard time trusting people, hard, mentally unstable, anxious, paranoid, can’t cook, fearful of losing loved ones, socially awkward, shy, secretly masochistic (heavily embarrassed of this fact about himself) and secretly soft-hearted (can’t show it due to his upbringing as a hunter).

Skills: Shooting with guns (specifically pistols), Fluent in different languages (Chinese, Japanese, English), her intelligence (has even gotten a higher score than Reiji on tests), has high patience, high stamina, a fast runner, enhanced sense of smell, slightly stronger than normal humans, good listening skills, reading people and their emotions, skilled at playing on the flute, singing, has good flexibility, is Ambidextrous (both left-handed and right-handed), charisma, negotiation and interrogation skills, pain endurance, has slow but steady healing, a quick thinker, surprisingly observant, excellent swordsmanship, and an expert martial artist.

~

History:

Born as an illegitimate child to the Kuroi family, Yuuichi has always been deemed as a “mistake” all of his life by his own grandmother, Tsurara Kuroi. At a young age, His father was disappeared after being reported as MIA during a mission while his mother was kidnapped by a vampire. He was placed under the care of his aunt and uncle for a short time, meeting his first-cousin, Hisoka Kuroi; Falling in love with her and her innocence, Yuuichi swore to protect her and to work hard to become her husband when they are older. Such a thing even became the reason why he would eventually become a exceptional vampire hunter as he grew older.

When he was placed under Tsurara’s care, Yuuichi was immediately taken to start the harsh vampire-hunter training for Kuroi family members; The training sessions caused him to experience horrors and force him to kill in order to save himself, resulting nightmares and eventual numbness in order to get through every training session. Becoming a professional at the age of 8, Yuuichi’s first mission was to kill the same vampire that kidnapped his mother; But once he did and comes across his mother, who was imprisoned the entire time and showed signs of abuse and bite marks, She tearfully begs him to kill her so that she doesn’t turn into a vampire, fearing she would end up hurting others the way her captive has hurt her. Heartbroken that their reunion would end up as it did, Yuuichi complies before telling his mother he loved her, in which his mother replies that she (along with his father) will always love him. From having to kill his own mother as well, this lead to the start of his burning hatred for vampires, vowing to eradicate every single one of them so that humans won’t have to suffer the same way his mother did.

After hearing about the deaths of his aunt and uncle, the memories of his father’s disappearance, and the kidnapping and death of his mother comes back to haunt him and fuel the burning hatred of vampires more; Whether or not Hisoka herself survived or not, Yuuichi will still remain guilty for not being able to be there to protect her or her innocence as he swore to.

If Hisoka did survive, whichi is Hisoka’s Route: Due to the fear of almost losing her, Yuuichi becomes heavily emotionally invested in her to a point he gets jealous of anyone that Hisoka interacts with, especially Yui Komori, who he envied and hated for being the one that helped Hisoka open up when she needed someone the most. Yuuichi would do anything for Hisoka just to make her happy and to win her love, in a similar way Richter loves Cordelia; However, when a mission to rescue Yui was changed to killing her, Yuuichi was the first to take the task to do so. Due to Hisoka’s love and devotion to Ruki Mukami, Yuuichi’s mentality breaks, becoming insane and unpredictable, and resorts to making his happiness happen by force (the happiness being promised by Tsurara herself if Yuuichi kills Yui successfully). This ends up failing and leads to his death by Hisoka’s hands.

If Hisoka didn’t survive, which is Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi becomes the only Kuroi member left in the new generation, making him the only other candidate to become heir to the Kuroi family. But Tsurara does not allow it as she still labels him a ‘mistake’, despite his adroit skills as a hunter. From this, Yuuichi comes to the belief that Tsurara had something to do with the death of the rest of his family members, especially after learning about the wiping out of the clan from his mother’s side. As such, He has decided to investigate deeper into the mystery, which lead to taking on the task to assassinate Yui Komori, only to use her to figure out a lead to Tsurara’s crimes that ended up massacring the rest of his family.

Sometime in between the Haunted Dark Bridal Saga and the MORE BLOOD Saga, Yuuichi was almost near death from a mission he was sent to by Tsurara, only to be saved by and turned by Richter on a certain condition:

Hisoka Route: Richter agrees to make Yuuichi strong enough to kill the Mukami’s, especially Ruki Mukami, who was working with Karlheinz, the Vampire King, but in exchange, Yuuichi will help him dethrone Karlheinz and kill the Sakamaki’s. Due to Yuuichi’s mentality breaking from Hisoka loving Ruki, He agrees to help Richter overthrow Karlheinz and kill the vampires. This is also because they share a mutual understanding of loving a woman that loves someone else, and will do anything just to make them happy/their own, to a point not having them in their arms makes them lose their own sanity.

Naoki Route: Richter agrees to help provide Yuuichi the information he needs to prove Tsurara was guilty, if Yuuichi agrees to keep Yui safe from the Sakamaki’s and the Mukami’s. While Yuuichi didn’t understand why Richter would give him this opportunity, seeing that they both have a common enemy in Tsurara, Yuuichi accepts this despite his own hatred for vampires as long as it would be beneficial to what he is looking for in order to get evidence of Tsurara’s crimes. He eventually does kidnap Yui, using Naoki as a distraction, but while he had her in his custody, they do eventually fall in love and Yuuichi realizes his own inhumane actions and decides to learn to love himself, as well as to move forward with his life.

Eventually, He goes undercover in the guise of a Teacher-in-Training at Ryoutei Academy.

(SPOILERS)

In Naoki’s route, in the DARK FATE Saga, It is revealed that Yuuichi is also a bloodline member of the Chinese clan of human vampire hunters with the first-blood blood in their veins, due to their foremother ancestor, Ying-Yue Jiang; Ying-Yue was the original host of a first-blood’s heart (whom was also her lover in her former life as a human), and was a human before turning into a vampire after she gave birth to a human son that carried the blood of a First-blood, Asher. Due to herself staying hidden for many centuries to hide from Karlheinz under her first-blood lover’s instructions, Ying-Yue was given the nickname “Lilith”, who was known to be the first wife of Adam but leaves him after she refuses to become subservient to him (in a similar sense where Ying-Yue refuses to let herself become experimented as an Eve to Karlheinz’s plan); However, their secret was revealed when one of their clan’s members was kidnapped by a vampire who found out about the truth of their blood. That kidnapped member was Yuuichi’s mother herself. And after the Clan was targeted and massacred, Yuuichi became one of the two only clan members left alive; The other revealing to be Naoki Enjo, the current host of Asher’s heart. The one that plotted the massacre of the clan was Tsurara herself; However, due to Karlheinz’s decision to kill off the entire family of Hisoka, including Hisoka herself, to allow one member from the Jiang clan escape from the massacre, this lead to Tsurara to hold a grudge as she had plans to use Hisoka as her perfect successor as Head of the VH Organization.

It is also revealed that, the real reason Tsurara called Yuuichi a mistake, is because she became aware of the first-blood blood in his veins, and deemed him as one with filthy blood; This is the reason why she refused to make him heir to the family, as all of his abilities were only enhanced from the blood of a first-blood, and that she only sent him on the mission where he was almost killed is to ensure that he does get killed and never returns. In Hisoka’s Route in the DARK FATE saga, where Yuuichi has already been killed, Tsurara explains that she was responsible in organizing the massacre of the Jiang clan and that she did arrange killing of Yuuichi in order to give Hisoka the push she needed to attempt rising up against her, and turn her into the perfect successor after Hisoka herself realizes the truth of her existence and the reason for the death of her family was all because she existed.

Once everything comes to light, in Naoki’s Route in the DARK FATE saga, Asher reveals to Yuuichi that his father was the one informed the clan about the kidnapping as a warning and took Naoki to the orphanage, but as a result from receiving word he gave warning of the VH Organization hunters coming to massacre them, Tsurara had him, one of her own sons, executed for “betraying the organization”.

~

Trivia:

• Yuuichi is unable to cook; Legend tells he tried to cook something himself, but he ends up burning everything he cooks into flames. Even cereal. Even in

Hisoka’s Route

in the

MORE BLOOD

saga, It is mentioned that Yuuichi himself almost burned down the organization from trying to cook; The one of the very few things he can do is brew coffee.

• While only describes as his hobbies, Yuuichi actually hunts and practices Martial arts as said hobbies is mainly because it helps him keep his figure and to ensure he does not slack off from lack of training.

This is why He doesn’t like day off’s, as he feels uncomfortable doing nothing and that he would rather much do something than doing nothing.

• In his own Manservant ending in the MORE BLOOD saga with Yui, He ends up becoming just like Richter and becomes a submissive slave to Yui, who would end up inheriting dominant, sadistic traits from Cordelia; He even ends up killing Richter to ensure Yui remains his, in fear that Richter will take her away from him.

In the DARK FATE route of Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi confronts Richter as he tries to make a move on Yui in the delusion that she’s Cordelia and denies being like him; This is ironic, considering the fact that he is very much like him in Hisoka’s Route, as his own mentality breaks and would do whatever means necessary to keep Hisoka at his side, even if it meant killing those in his way.

•  He inherited his blue eyes from his father, while his mother holds the same pink eyes as Naoki; It is implied that the bloodline family members of the Jiang clan have the same colored eyes, but the reason why Yuuichi has blue eyes is because the Kuroi family genes has been known to be arguably stronger.

• Yuuichi was originally made to be a character for Hisoka Kuroi’s universe; However, regretting such great potential to go to waste, Yuki (The creator of this blog and @star-crossedfidelity​) brought him back for Naoki Enjo’s story in an alternative universe and gives him a happy ending where he is the love interest of Yui Komori.

• Yuuichi’s real name is Yòu-Yī Jiang (Jiang Yòu-Yī; 江佑一), which respectively mean “To protect all” and “River”.

• Upon his appearance in the MORE BLOOD Saga in Naoki’s route,  

• By the DARK FATE saga in Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi is revealed to be spiritually-Endowed Human-First Blood Hybrid; This is due to Ying-Yue Jiang, his foremother and Asher’s lover, became the first carrier of the first-blood’s heart before she had sexual intercourse with another human in an arranged marriage, which lead to conceiving a human child that would later start a family line of human with first-blood ancestry from Ying-Yue carrying Asher’s heart before the child was conceived; Thus, Yuuichi is a human with first-blood ancestry.

Asher reveals that because the child was born from two humans, despite his blood running through its veins, they can not possess magic, transform, or summon familiars like a first-blood; Instead, because of his blood, The child was stronger, quicker, and healed faster than an average human, along with inheriting the ability to sense vampires and invisible familiars. This is why the clan were phenomenal vampire hunters as, while they can’t see them, they can sense their presence, using those abilities to their advantages.

Asher also reveals that Yuuichi’s enhanced abilities were due to the blood that ran through the family bloodline for generations, and if Yuuichi was the host for his heart, Asher admits that Yuuichi would’ve unlock even more power due to his upbringing as a vampire hunter.

• Due to never having a normal childhood or having a chance to relax, Yuuichi has no knowledge or recollection on what’s it’s like to be a child; For example, He has never been to an amusement park, nor has he ever been to a festival before.

• While he is good with swordsmanship, He prefers to use guns instead; The reason for this is because, when he went on his first mission, He used a sword; Which meant he had to kill his own mother with the sword, and began to use guns after that. In Hisoka’s Route, It is confirmed that Yuuichi would only use swords if he is being sent on a more difficult mission.

• Yuuichi uses the alias “Yuuichi Jiang”, a mixture of his Japanese name and his mother’s maiden name; However, in Naoki’s Route in the MORE BLOOD saga, this is how Asher began to suspect Yuuichi as another living survivor of the massacre, due to his Chinese decent, his own enhanced abilities, and his familiar scent of those from the Jiang clan.

• In Hisoka’s Route, Yuuichi is in love with Hisoka, and not Yui, who he bitterly hated and envied; However, in Naoki’s Route, Yuuichi becomes Yui’s keeper by the MORE BLOOD Saga and they end up falling in love. ~

Credits: Character sheet image, art provided by @seven-re​.

#yuuichi kuroi #Yuuyui #diabolik lovers oc

[gothic-safari-clown]

The Mind’s Power Over the Body

PART THREE: REMINISCENCE

Story Summary:  They only ever had each other. It had been that way since high school, ever since Elianna transferred to dreary Arlen and took Jonathan under her wing. They go separate ways for college, and when they’re reunited at Arkham Asylum professionally, Elianna comes to find that they’ve both changed during their time separated. Can she look past the promise of danger and stay by Jonathan’s side as they slide further and further into the darkness while she grapples to come to terms with the truth about herself? Can she accept what needs to be done in order to hold onto the only person who holds any meaning in her life? This is a very self-indulgent AU that draws from several different canons of the DCU and ignoring others, starting in the Batman Begins Nolanverse. This will follow the plot of the movie, although the timeline has been very slightly tweaked.

TW for bullying & choking

Part One / Part Two

Word count: 4427

When her alarm went off the next morning, Elianna awoke with an inspiring vigor for the day, doing her makeup and getting dressed in record time. She was excited actually to start working in a place that needed her; the main reason she had decided to move her career to Gotham—besides Jonathan, of course—was the dire and consistent need of psychiatrists to treat and diagnose the high concentration of criminals with psychological disorders in the city. As crude as it sounded, abnormal psychology had always been her favorite field of study, and this city had the best chance of taking her career where she wanted it to be.

She greeted the parking guard with an excited grin, flashing her new badge, to which he gave an enthusiastic thumbs up and raised the gate to let her in. In a few short minutes, she entered into the lobby of the asylum, picked up her schedule from the friendly secretary, and as she moved toward the stairs, she did a quick scan of the lobby for her friend, and with no sign of him she headed up to her office.

A glance over her itinerary for the week told her that it would be filled with relatively low profile sessions brought to her office for her to speak with. Makes sense; I would probably ease in a new hire too, she thought to herself. However, there was one at the end of the week that caught her attention. A Victor Zsasz, who she would be speaking to in a secure room rather than in her office. A small note next to that slot further stated that there would be two guards accompanying her on the assignment rather than one; she couldn’t be sure if it was that note or something subconscious, but something about that name gave Elianna a sinking feeling of apprehension in her stomach that she found surprisingly liberating.

This sort of high profile patient had been exactly what she had secretly been hoping for in moving to the city. As satisfying as it was to help those in need, such as the people who had come to her office in California, this felt right, and she found herself both terrified and excited for that particular session.

In the meantime, she decided to prepare for the four appointments she had scheduled that day. They were all scheduled for that morning, leaving her afternoon free, presumably for paperwork. In the end, all four seem to go by very quickly, and Elianna easily built a rapport with all of them. Technically speaking, she didn’t truly believe that any of them needed to be in the facility. In this city, having a touch of anxiety was probably better than not. Of course, they wouldn’t have been admitted for illegitimate reasons, so she ultimately decided that she simply didn’t know them well enough to have reached the root of the problem yet.

Looking at the clock, Elianna saw that it was 1 PM and decided to take a break before filling out all of her paperwork to meet a few of her coworkers, and hopefully, finally, see Jonathan.

She found herself chatting with a Doctor Harleen Quinzel, a bubbly blonde with a Jersey accent who insisted that El call her “Harley.” The redhead quickly decided that she liked Doctor Quinzel, even if she seemed a bit quirky.

“I can’t believe they gave you that corner office with the window; it is to die for!” The blonde practically oozed with amicable jealously.

“I didn’t realize it was in such high demand.” El laughed and took a moment to admire her new friend’s good spirit, whose smile suddenly dropped a bit as she caught sight of something over El’s shoulder.

“Oh, act natural, don’t turn around,” Harley said in a hushed voice.

“What?” Elianna was confused and a little concerned. “What’s going on, why shouldn’t I—”

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a Doctor Montgomery?” A familiar voice said from behind the woman in question, and she gave a slow smile—finally—to which Harley quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose either of you has seen her around.” El fought the urge to hug Jonathan when she turned around and finally saw his face.

“Jonathan, you jerk, the look on Harley’s face made me think it was someone important.” She teased, and then hugged him anyway, which he returned.

“Glad to see you still think of me as highly as you used to.” He said smugly as they separated; he seemed to have gotten better at handling physical contact, but she didn’t want to push it. Taking him in, she found herself slightly stunned. He looked…good.

“God, look at you, you’re not a stick anymore, you have color in your face and everything!” The redhead found herself smiling, so excited to see Jonathan—her Jonathan—for the first time in years. He returned her smile with a faint one of his own, telling her in its own way that he was also happy to see her, even if he wouldn’t say it out loud.

“Hold on, I’m sorry, you two know each other?” Harley chimed in from behind Elianna, bringing her back to reality.

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry, that was rude of me. I’m sure you two already know each other, but we actually went to high school together; we were the only two that weren’t complete assholes.” She explained, still a little giddy from the belated reunion.

“I wouldn’t say that; we just had boundaries,” Jonathan teased under his breath and shook Harley’s hand. “Good to see you again, Doctor Quinzel.”

“Wait, I thought you just moved here?” The blonde inquired to Elianna after giving their colleague a courteous nod.

“I did, we actually come from this tiny hick town in Georgia. Not that you could tell, thank goodness.”

“Aw, that’s fun that you’re both here now! In that case, I’ll leave you to catch up; I have an appointment to get to anyway. You two have fun, I’ll see you later El,” Harley gave her new friend a tight hug and a peck on the cheek before sashaying off to where she needed to be.

“Affectionate girl,” Jonathan quipped amusedly.

“Yeah, she’s a sweetheart.” Elianna smiled. “By the way, what did you do to her? The look on her face when she saw you really had me nervous for a second.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that I have some antisocial tendencies. As it turns out, it makes people nervous.”

“Yeah, most people. By the way, should we get to the part where you admit that you missed me, or are we just going to skip that altogether?” El teased, and Jonathan stood for a moment just looking at her with the faintest hint of a smile before glancing at his feet, and for that split second, he was that scrawny, awkward kid that she had known before.

“I did miss you,” he admitted quietly and suddenly made direct eye contact, and Elianna’s knees almost went weak. What the hell? Had his eyes always been that blue? Of course, he had never necessarily been unattractive, but it had been so hard to see through all of his misery and standoffishness. Well, she thought to herself, he still seems a bit standoffish, but confidence looks good on him.

“I wasn’t sure if you even knew I was here. I wanted to surprise you, actually.”

“Of course, I knew you were here. Who do you think made Sharpe read that essay you submitted in the first place?” He fired back with a slight smirk, and goddamn where did he learn to do that?

“I don’t know. I just assumed that he would read every submission resume he received. Does he not?” Jonathan shook his head.

“I happened to notice your name on a stack of folders on his desk during a meeting, and I made sure he would read it.”

“Wh- you knew the whole time?” She asked incredulously. “And you didn’t even send me a text or anything, you little rat.” Elianna faked upset, but once she thought about it, it actually made quite a bit of sense. Arkham was rather famous after all, and there were bound to be plenty of doctors as crazy as her applying regularly. And, she hated to think it, but the warden had seemed less than interested in taking a chance on hiring people, given his remark about someone else having quit “luckily for her.”

“Aww, you really did miss me, didn’t you?” She winked at him and nudged him with her elbow.

“Don’t make me repeat it,” he replied in an almost joking tone. “You’re still the only person I can actually tolerate.” He seemed to avoid the rest of that conversation by checking his watch. “And as much as I’d love to catch up some more, I also have an appointment to get to soon. Why don’t you come to my apartment tonight and we can catch up? I’ll text you the address.”

“Oh, sure, that sounds great.” He sent her the information, and they exchanged quick goodbyes, and El went back up to her office to finish her paperwork so that she would be ready to leave on time.

.xXx.

Elianna was still somewhat reeling from her friend’s newfound confidence when she left for the day. The last time that she had seen him, she had come to the city to visit for three days during college, and he couldn’t even ask for help on a report, and now he was able to blurt out “come to my apartment tonight” like it was nothing. All things considered, she was proud of him.

On the way to her car, Elianna found herself wondering if Jonathan had really changed that much in such a short amount of time. When she first met him, she had almost thought he was a ghost; he was so reserved. In fact, if she really thought about it, she could recall every detail of that day.

It had been her first day at Arlen High since moving to the town with her mother. Her parents had just been divorced, and her mother had thought that a small town would be a good change to the chaos of the city they had lived in, and Elianna could hardly believe that the spit of  road could be considered “civilization.”  As much as she enjoyed the spacious old home they had been able to afford, she wasn’t looking forward to the surely boring life they would lead there.

She had walked to school, and the whole time she couldn’t stop looking forward to finally being able to drive herself places. ‘Only a few months away.’ She had been immediately pegged as the new girl—unsurprising given the small student body—and had been swooped up by the popular crowd, one Sherry Squires, to be exact. She seemed horribly dull and shallow, but Elianna decided that letting Squires have her way would be the easiest way to make friends and survive the next few years.

However, the skinny, quiet boy with whom she had shared several classes had somehow caught her attention. Very unusual, given that he didn’t seem to speak to anyone and quietly did his work the whole time. Maybe it was the bitterness rolling off of him, or maybe that the lack of socialization in a room full of obnoxious teenagers, but something about him was just…distinctly different.

During the last passing period of the day, while expressing idle interest in whatever the hell Sherry was jabbering about, she had noticed that same boy shuffling through the hall on his own. Before El could ask Squires what his deal was, Bo Griggs, your stereotypical dumb jock, had schlepped over to him and shoulder checked him into the wall, his books tumbling to the floor while Sherry snickered.

“Looks like Ichabod is in for a pounding,” she sounded maliciously gleeful of that fact, and her arms cattily crossed over her chest only highlighted that fact.

“Ichabod?” Like the Sleepy Hollow character? It was a weird name, but alright.

“Oh, his real name is Jonathan, but nobody cares about that,” Sherry had explained dismissively. “His last name is Crane, like the character from that book or whatever, but he’s just so scrawny and weird, we all just call him Ichabod or Scarecrow.” El had nodded in understanding and watched with conflicted emotions as Jonathan did his best to ignore the taunting and shoving directed at him. However, her mind was made up when a particularly nasty push sent the boy to the floor, hitting his head on the wall as he fell.

“Okay, no! That’s enough,” she had spoken up before she even realized what she was doing. Sherry and Bo both seemed equally shocked as they looked at her in confusion, Bo actually stepping away from his quarry. “What the hell is your problem?” Bo’s face had turned red.

“It’s about to be you, new bitch.” He had snarled and took a few steps toward her.

“Sure, I get that, you’re intimidated by my brain cell count, but seriously, is that what the big deal is? You couldn’t find anyone more stupid and pathetic than you, so you take out our insecurities on him? Grow up; I think more people here relate to that than you think.” She snapped with a pointed look at Sherry, who gaped at El as she brushed past Bo like it was nothing. Wasting no time, she gathered Jonathan’s books in a pile with her own and hauled him up by the arm, dragging him down the hall and away from the crowd. If this was to be the only class they didn’t share, she would be very embarrassed.

“Is your head alright?” She had asked the boy—'Jonathan, his name is Jonathan'—as she handed back his books.

“It’s fine.” Hm. Not talkative. Shocker.

“It looked like you hit pretty hard from where I was standing, are you sure?”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Yeah, not surprised, given that bunch.” She had turned to look at him as she spoke; he seemed to have been distancing himself as much as he could without being rude. “I’m Elianna, by the way.”

“I know. You and your mother moved into the house next to ours. And you just ruined any chance you had of fitting in here.” She had shrugged, already knowing the second part.

“So what, I’m used to that. Besides, why would I want to fit in with those guys?” The corner of Jonathan’s mouth had twitched up in some facsimile of a smile.

“Hell if I know.” He had muttered. “But either way, it’ll just get worse if you hang around me, you might want to keep your distance.” He added flatly, all traces of any kind of personality from a second before gone.

Look, I believe you, but I’d rather not. I doubt I can get any standing back now, and you seem much more interesting anyway.“ She had shrugged, to which Jonathan shook his head.

"I mean it. Keep your distance.” He had repeated and sped up, leaving her behind in the hallway with his much longer legs. It had been awkward that period when the teacher had assigned her to sit in the empty seat next to him.

Looking back, it hadn’t altogether been a bad day. She had quickly established herself as someone not to be taken lightly, which had subsequently gotten her into some tight spots with the “popular” crowd. Besides that, even if it took a few extra weeks after Jonathan had realized that she wasn’t going to leave him alone, she had finally gotten him to open up a bit to her. It was strange to think about how far they had come.

Even more so when she pulled up outside of Jonathan’s apartment building, from what she could tell on the outside, each unit was fairly spacious; it seemed that he had done well for himself, although he hadn’t been very picky about his living spaces for the most part. Unsurprising, given the conditions that his grandmother had kept him in. He had dragged himself out of the pits of hell into a (presumably) swanky apartment and a fairly prestigious job; she couldn’t help but be impressed.

It didn’t take her long to find a spot in guest parking, take the elevator up seven floors and knock on his door. When Jonathan answered the door, he was still in his work clothes minus the suit jacket, indicating that he had only barely gotten home himself.

“Hello, love,” El greeted him with a quick hug before stepping inside and slipping her shoes off. She took a moment to take in the living area. It was furnished with that type of sturdy yet elegant old furniture, which suited him well. She had been right; it was a good size on the inside, just enough room for him and his stacks of research books and papers to be somewhat scattered around. Altogether, it built that sort of rustic studious aesthetic that she had always associated with him. “Very nice,” she commented approvingly.

“It’s certainly a few steps up from granny’s,” He agreed as he closed the door behind her.

“Yeah, quite a few,” El agreed. She had only been inside of his childhood home once, and only for a minute or two at Jonathan’s behest; he had been afraid that the old woman would wake up and catch him speaking to someone. “I see you still never learned to clean up after yourself, though.” She teased with a passing glance at a sheet of notes on a patient with severe agoraphobia.

“Please, I was there when you rearranged your room, don’t try to pretend I’m any worse than you are.” He shot back good-naturedly as they sat on the couch.

“At least none of that stuff was important,” she protested, gesturing to the stack of notes and diagnoses she had just looked at. “And is my mind playing tricks on me, or did your handwriting somehow get worse?”

“You hush,” he said, settling into the cushion next to her, resting a hand on her knee when she leaned against the armrest and draped her legs over his lap, both of them acting as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and for them it was. “How was California? Did it meet your expectations?”

“Yeah, for a while, eventually, I just got bored. What about Gotham?”

“Fine. Better than Arlen anyway. A fresh start can be useful, I suppose.” El nodded understandingly. Georgia really had been horrible to him. She supposed that she could attribute Gotham to his success and growth. She laid her head back against the armrest, thinking. “How did we let it get this long since we’ve talked?” She asked and rolled her head to the side to look at him. He’d let his head fall on the back of the couch and was staring at the ceiling as he shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he replied quietly and turned his head to the side without lifting it to look back at her. El found herself rememorizing everything about his face. He had changed so much. Again, it wasn’t as though he had ever been bad to look at, she mused to herself. A little skinny, maybe, but now that his face had filled out to match his cheekbones and could afford to eat regularly, he looked healthier. Even his hair was thicker, and maybe even a little bit darker, which made the blue of his eyes stand out shockingly. She could easily see how his maintained eye contact would be unsettling to someone who didn’t know him as well as she did.

In fact, the only thing about him that had stayed entirely unchanged was the subtle darkness that sat just behind the surface of those piercing eyes, and she knew exactly why.

“Have you been able to keep him under control?” She couldn’t help the soft question that came out. Over the silence of the apartment, her quiet voice sounded like a sin.

“For the most part,” Jonathan replied equally quietly. “There have been some…incidents few and far between, but other than that fine.” He blinked, and after a beat, he confessed, “He wants to talk to you.”

Elianna’s heart sunk to the floor, and she shook her head. The man sitting before her was her friend, but the Scarecrow terrified her. He was unpredictable and sadistic, and he turned Jonathan into something disturbing. “You know I wouldn’t let him,” he reassured El. “I won’t let him slip around you again.” El shivered involuntarily as she remembered what he meant.

It had been during that time that she had visited him during college. She had only been in one class that semester, and the professor had given everyone a week off while the air conditioning duct in his classroom needed to be repaired. Jonathan had seemed stressed during their weekly phone call, and she had some money saved up, so she had taken advantage of this opportunity to fly to Gotham and visit Jonathan for a few days.

As a rule, he didn’t like surprises, but Elianna had been able to tell that he was relieved to see her. He had even hugged her as she arrived and seemed glad to have her staying with him in his campus apartment for a few days.

On her first night there, they had taken a walk around campus after dark, and her suspicion that something was wrong was confirmed when his usual silence was strained, as were his short replies to her questions.

“Maybe we should go back; you clearly aren’t doing alright.” She had suggested gently, laying her hand on his arm, to which he had nodded slowly and taken a shaky breath.

“He’s trying to get out,” El had immediately known who he was talking about, even if she had never technically seen Scarecrow before. “Classes are really taking a lot out of me, and I don’t know if I can-” There had been a brief moment of dissociation, and when Jonathan’s eyes came back into focus, it wasn’t him.

“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” Scarecrow had started. “But you know I’ve been here longer than you have.” He finished smugly. The voice was Jonathan’s but rougher, and his eyes were filled with a sudden life at the prospect of whatever Scarecrow had in mind for her.

“Where is Jonathan?” She had barely been able to ask the question; something about the way he was looking at her made her horribly uneasy.

“Aw, what? You don’t like me?” Scarecrow had asked mockingly, stepping closer when she didn’t answer. She was frozen to the spot. “Do I scare you?” He continued, and her continued silence was the exact answer he had been looking for. “Good.”

Without any warning, after a moment of stillness, he had lunged for her, and somehow Elianna had managed to duck out of the way just in time and took off in the other direction with Scarecrow in close pursuit. She was looking for a place she might be able to hide, but her unfamiliarity with the campus had betrayed her, and just as she thought that she had lost him, he suddenly rounded the corner in front of her.

Her scream had been cut short when he had pinned her against the nearby wall with his forearm across her throat. He looked like he was saying something to her, but she couldn’t focus on what it was over the rushing blood in her ears. However, she could see with her fading vision Scarecrow using Jonathan’s body to laugh at her. She was going fuzzy around the edges, and the only thought that she had been able to manage was that she would die there.

Just as the last of her vision was beginning to fade and her lungs were screaming for air, the horrible grin had vanished, and she could see the difference as Jonathan had regained control with a panicked look on his face. The next thing El knew, he was helping her off the ground; she must have fallen when he removed his arm from her neck. Despite the knowledge that Scarecrow was gone, she had pulled herself out of his grip, opting to use the wall for support instead. The back of her head ached, and she had coughed hard, still struggling for breath and rubbing the growing bruise on her neck.

She had never seen anyone look so terrified and apologetic as Jonathan’s mouth silently opened and closed, fumbling for words. It wasn’t until his eyes fell to her throat that he stilled, sucking in a deep breath. The traces of tears in his eyes told El everything that she needed to know, and without another second of hesitation, she had thrown her arms around him in a tight embrace. She could remember how he had squeezed her back, and they stood there like that for a few minutes, both trembling from the close call. Finally, they had walked back to his apartment in silence and hadn’t even mentioned it since.

Until now.

El took a deep breath before finally asking, “Can you promise me that you have him under control?” He nodded silently in response.

“Never again, El. I promise.” He added a few seconds later. His answer seemed to satisfy the redhead, and she let herself relax again.

They stayed like that for a few more hours, sometimes talking and sometimes sitting in comfortable silence. When she left, Elianna managed to coax another hug out of him on her way out the door and stretched up to kiss his cheek, not an unusual thing for her to do, but he blushed faintly just like he always did at the affection. She smiled to herself on her way back to her car. He really wasn’t that different from the timid boy she had taken under her wing all those years ago, a soothing thought to send her home.

#the mind's power over the body #jonathan crane #scarecrow #batman begins #nolanverse #elianna montgomery #jonathan crane x ofc #slight au #multi chapter fic #fanfiction #attraction to the insane #cillian murphy #cillian murphy scarecrow #tmpotb chapter 3

[remarkthecat]

Cats Over-analyzed pt. 2:  Old Deuteronomy

Another unnecessarily detailed analysis of Cats 1998, this time focusing on Munkustrap and Tugger’s interactions as they introduce Old Deuteronomy.

1. Mistofelees and the psychic twins (Coricopat and Tantomile) all sense something in the air.  Misto is the first to identify that it might be the tribe’s leader questioning, “Old Deuteronomy?”  1. He defers to Munkustrap by reaching toward him and Munk shifts focus toward the twins who confirm that they believe it really is him.

(Sidenote:  Jelly’s absolute star eyes looking at Misto to see if it really, really could be Deuteronomy are just!!! precious!!! We love an aunt!)

2. After the twins confirm the leader’s approach, Munkustrap closes his eyes and warmly shares his happiness with Jelly and Electra before gesturing for Misto to go and fetch their leader (off-stage).  (Meanwhile, the cats start to flop around in contentment on the ground and it’s #cute.)

3.  Munkustrap sings the first verse of Deuteronomy’s song to the kittens, his pride and love for them obvious as he shares the tribe’s traditions. (Old Deuteronomy’s lived a long time . . ) 

4. He seems surprised by Tugger’s entrance.  Tugger picks up the song by discussing Deuteronomy’s wives.  Munkustrap creeps over quickly, his body language low as if he’s unsure where Tugger is going with this. 

5. He straightens up in a kind of alarm once Tugger adds the “99” wives comment and Tugger’s expressions are exaggerated almost to a sneer which seems to set Munkustrap on edge.

6. Tugger then begins the line about Deuteronomy’s numerous progeny and his gaze avoids Munkustrap entirely.  It is only at the very last second, he points to Munkustrap, a glint in his eyes. This turns into the slightest of bows:  as if expressing the benevolence of his intentions when he adds, “And the village is proud of him in his decline.”

(If you watch this in the video, you can actually see Munk scan Tugger after the “prospers and thrives” comment, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing).

7. Finally, with this moment passed, Munkustrap seems confident to turn back to the tribe and continue the song:  his expression softened greatly, eyes almost glimmering with emotion. Tugger steps down closer to Munk’s level and watches him with a soft kind of pride or admiration.

(LOOK AT JOHN’S SOFT LITTLE SMILE I--!!!!!)

8.  When he begins to sing with Munkustrap, the other seems genuinely yearning and joyful to have the support, turning from the tribe and stepping toward Tugger in a way that, for once, makes him seem younger than the other, as if he can’t contain his happiness.  But Tugger simply shrugs off the thankfulness of the action with a smile and continues to sing. 

Analysis: Munkustrap has been accepted for a while as the rightful protector and leader of the tribe (in Deuteronomy’s absence of course).  The older and younger cats all defer to him in this moment and in all things.  However, Tugger’s interruption and Munkustrap’s reaction to it suggest that at least Tugger has not always accepted this fact.  (No other cats interrupt Munk throughout his official duties and Munk turning his back on the tribe to see what Tugger is up to seems big).  Tugger’s discussion of Deuteronomy’s many wives seems to spark a reaction of alarm in Munkustrap.  And, in fact, Tugger waits until the last minute to reveal his true intentions.  He keeps Munkustrap in suspense up until he points to him and bows during the line about Deuteronomy’s progeny and the village’s pride. This acceptance seems to surprise and overjoy Munkustrap who then returns to his duties while also sharing the spotlight with Tugger.

Head-Canons: Munkustrap and Tugger have been at odds with each other in the past over claims to Deuteronomy’s lineage. Munkustrap is self-conscious over his apparent illegitimacy and Tugger used to hold on to some kind of resentment over the fact that Munkustrap had risen to such high ranks whereas he had not. (OR that Munkustrap broke up his family.  See “Changes”below).

Yet here, in this moment, and for the first time, Tugger publicly expresses his support for Munkustrap in a way subtle enough that the kittens would not understand but that Munkustrap hears loud and clear:  he is as much Deuteronomy’s son as anyone and a worthy successor of him, at that, if Tugger’s slight bow is any measure. 

CHANGES:  This changes my idea of Grizabella being Munk’s mother.  Maybe instead Grizabella was Deuteronomy’s wife but Munkustrap is an illegitimate son from one of Deuteronomy’s unofficial wives (of the ‘‘99″ variety).  Munkustrap is a constant reminder to Grizabella of her mate’s infidelity--an embarrassment (in her eyes) in front of the tribe--but even worse is that Deuteronomy seems to favor Munk over HER legitimate sons (Macavity and Tugger).  Grizabella’s jealousy is twisted overtime and her whispers to Macavity about his future being stolen from him do not help matters. Of course, Grizabella wasn’t exactly the best mother and she wants the glamour of power more than the responsibility, so her obsession with appearances eventually lead to her leaving the tribe and Macavity’s turn to “the dark side.”  

#cats 1998 #munkustrap #rum tum tugger #cats musical #old deuteronomy #listen i am extra soft for tugger & munk brotherly affections these two are stubborn but they are FAMILY!!!!! #also my head canons are in constant flux #and screw the logical explanations i am going DEEP for /no good reason/ on every micro expression lol

[janiedean]

So was discussing this with a friend. S8 s*ansa talking about r+L even tho jon asked her not to. Initially we were like book!s would never, but then my friend said book!s DID in book 1 (telling ned's plan to c). Now obviously these are 2 v different situations. Book!s was a kid who had NO idea abt the larger context of things, and she wasn't aware of the political games going on. She genuinely thought she was doing the Right thing or at least what would eventually benefit her and her family 1/2

~because if c and joff are happy it will benefit the starks. So my friend said s8 stuff wasn't all that different since she genuinely believed Dany was nuts and Westeros was better off without her and that jon couldn't see it because he loved her. Plus if jon ends up on the iron throne (which is what we thought she was getting at in telling tyrion) it's again good for the starks? What do you think? If nothing it made sense in the context of show!s considering LF her mentor? 2/2

... I... respectfully disagree on just about everything. In order:

as you said, book!sansa had no fucking idea what she was doing, she was being misled by both cersei and joffrey and she thought she was saving her father, not benefit her family, which is normal given that she’s... twelve. or whatever;

now, the problem is that it’s bad writing if a character starts somewhere and arrives at the same place without nothing having fucking changed in between unless it’s a movie whose point is being depressing or specifically wants to be tragic, because like... circular writing for *long* series where people get invested in *character development* means that we get at the same situation but with changed people - for one, idk, it’s circular writing if jaime’s last line in the series is the things I do for love after he idk knights brienne or saving tyrion’s life or doing something selfless, because we went from jaime who does things for love that are bad for him and bad for everyone else involved to jaime doing things for love for good reasons, which is why among the other reasons the bells is a shit episode that doesn’t work on any level, so if sansa spills the truth about jon to tyrion exactly the way she did in got therefore causing harm and the only difference is that she knows she’s causing harm sansa hasn’t had any development outside of ‘wow she started as a sweet girl and now she’s cersei 2.0′;

on that sense, the entire point in sansa being mentored by lf in the book is that she’s not going to turn out like him or cersei which is plenty obvious because it’s been four books and she’s still kind and empathetic to everyone including people who hurt her, so that is not a legitimate writing choice imvho;

now, about sansa spilling about r+l, there is a whole other level of wrong in it, which we can further divide into the following categories: a) first of all for what THE SHOW told me, sansa basically decided dany was nuts and hated her because WHY THE FUCK NOT - there is no literal reason for show sansa to dislike dany that much when she went with jon to help, JON was the king so it was his decision to kneel, she didn’t hurt the northerners and she arrived with an army to kill the goddamned zombies, so basically by the point she spills to tyrion she seems like she’s doing that out of pettiness - honest, by 8x04 dany hadn’t... looked nuts or anything, and I’m saying it as someone who doesn’t care about dany but thinks that if S8 did one thing was making you root for her even if you previously didn’t; b) sansa swore in front of a heart tree (which is sacred to northerners) that she wouldn’t spill and then she did, which is... not that great; c) more than that, it was going against jon’s wishes because jon made overtly clear that he didn’t want the throne, that he didn’t want to act on his rights and that he knelt to dany and that he wasn’t interested in challenging her claim, so if sansa wanted him to be king she was basically ignoring what HE wanted without even consulting with him first, which is an incredibly bad breach of trust on her side that honestly, if I had been jon in the finale I’d have told her to fuck off and that I never wanted to see her again X°DD like you don’t put people on thrones when they didn’t ask you to out of disliking the legitimate ruler that your brother who was king at the moment bent the knee to because you presumably.... want the independent north which in the books is a thing that will happen because bran is 100% the next kitn, but is not a thing inherently seen as morally better or more just than any other option and which neither ned nor robb actually wanted, so.... no;

‘dany being nuts’ was a decision dnd took without even planning it well because she basically lost it without one single illegitimate reason - I mean, again considering that I don’t care for dany and I think she’s a good khaleesi but not a great ruler and that her adwd stint confirms it and that she’s not endgame ruler for the end of the books... what I see in S8 is that the poor girl goes to winterfell to help them and sansa treats her like shit and everyone treats her like shit, she has to see one of her dragons die once, jorah dies in front of her, when she tries to mingle with the others she gets treated like she doesn’t belong, then it turns out that her new boyfriend is her nephew and a threat to her claim which she has staked her entire storyline on, then almost all of her closest advisors decide to turn against her for wtf reasons when she said from the beginning that she was there to kill cersei and reclaim her rights, then she loses her second dragon and her best friend in the span of one day, then during the bells she goes berserk because they decided to give her joncon’s storyline out of nowhere and bc dnd haven’t even read the first version of the first dance with dragons, but like... honestly at that point my opinion was ‘if she goes and dracaryses the entire continent I’ll just cheer because what the fucking fuck is this they just made her sympathetic and sansa looks like a cold scheming asshole which is not the character I love’, so like... where is the truth? the truth is that dnd decided to go with that shit ending where maybe 5% was grrm’s thing (I mean the small council made of cripples bastards and broken things is a grrm thing, how they get there.... no) and dany didn’t feature in it and they didn’t know how to finish and they went with that also because they knew most fake feminist press was rallying behind the ‘sansa as queen in the north who needs no man’ bullshit storyline so what the fuck let’s just go with that, and like.... again: as someone who doesn’t gaf about dany in the books, that was just not it period

tldr: s8 sansa makes sense maybe if we take her as a separate character who has nothing to do with her book self and that dnd wrote to be cersei lite except slightly more likable, but her actions make no sense, her writing makes no sense and hasn’t since they gave her theon’s fucking sl in S5 and there is literally nothing past episode 8x02 except maybe four scenes that actually makes any shred of narrative sense as an adaptation and within the show’s context, since a lot of stuff is basically characters contradicting each other. I said what I said. /shrug

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #anti show sansa #got negativity #wow it's been a year i'm still pissed #Anonymous #ask post

[progressivepoc]

Letter To People Of Color

Dear People, I was born in 1992 in Birmingham during the crack epidemic that was reprehensible and destructive to many urban communities in America. I had family members who were both drug users and drug pushers during this time. For some families during this time period, those two options were all you had because the wave of drugs was too much to avoid being engulfed in this illegal yet government-funded economy. (source) In an attempt to escape those harsh realities, I had a mother who academically advanced herself in order to provide a better opportunity for her children. Unfortunately for her, she had failed to tell her children the truth and expose us to the realities in which we were escaping. Perhaps it was because of how close to home it would have hit us to know that she too was complicit in or benefitted from this government sponsored economy at some point. Sometimes it is very difficult to reconcile within one’s self upon the decisions made in the past. But no matter how we justify those decisions, we made them given the best information we had at the time. Nearing my third decade on this earth, I recognize some of the compounding factors that lead to the overall state of minority communities and first nations communities, some I have researched and some I have experienced. From the inception of this nation, the designated rights and freedoms were designed for white protestant men. Through time, they amended laws to appease the wealthy amongst them in order to maintain their union, but not to advance their vision with the inclusion of non-white groups of people, see amendment 13 and research the Civil War. Over hundreds of years, this country has failed to properly and formally acknowledge its treatment of the first nations and African slaves who were just animals to them much like a horse, with some breeds more exotic than the other. (source) Had it not been for my mother’s actions to remove her children from that environment I cannot say that I would be here today. All of the different exposure I had to art, literature, business, politics, and music was made possible because of her efforts to expose her children to something other than the world in which she saw was a stone’s throw away from us. (source) Not only did that exposure introduce me to new things, but it also helped me understand what I was missing and why. There was a time in my adolescence that movies like Scarface and The Godfather gave me principles even though the men weren’t angels on earth. Media was molding me instead of my community because my community was broken. Broken by generations of hopeful misery while fighting and protesting for equal rights. The ears of the audience they spoke to could not yet hear them because they could only see through their carefully crafted lens which was skewed to see whiteness as pureness and everything else as a threat to their way of life. I had to educate myself on my environment at a young age to understand that, and to compound the frustration, I had to wake up to the harsh realities that I was complicit in furthering the damage. I had done nothing to help push my community forward towards equality or better circumstances politically, economically, academically, or even socially. I was complicit and victim to the economic system of capitalism in which I thought the accumulation of wealth was a very fine idea truly. I was complicit and victim to the world of academia that was European-based and had no truth to tell me of my ancestors whose religion they stole and morphed into their own for social order. I was complicit and victim to their politics which were racist from the beginning, see the declaration of independence call natives of the first nations merciless savage Indians. I was complicit in being afraid of talking to police or white people in public because of the inherently racist social norms that became normalized through my community. Through conversations, piecing information together because I could never get the whole story, I discovers some of my family members had a role in furthering the hurt amongst our urban communities. Their ignorant pursuit of illegitimate wealth wreaked havoc on families and communities. Their involvement mutated the DNA and shifted the trajectory of so many future children. Their actions or inaction are causations for the trauma etched in the psyches of many people of color. I wasn’t there for the drug raids, the trafficking of guns, the overdoses, the generational destruction done to families whose off-spring would pay a grave price for years to come, but I feel responsible. I feel responsible for the misogyny, the capitalistic greed, the violence, the debauchery, and the corruption that bleeds from my heart from years of wrongdoing by families like mine that only made matters worse for people of color. We only added to the stereotypes that would later be used to justify harsher penalties for crimes or the redlining of neighborhoods to keep those people locked in a certain area so that the economic building could happen in places away from where the urbanites dwelled. Although I am not responsible for their actions, I take responsibility for them. It’s easy to think self-righteously in a world built by your ancestors backs but built exclusively against you, see Three-Fifths Compromise. Some of my family members made a way for themselves to prevail despite all that was stacked against them. But the real question is at what cost? Whether intentional or not, we as a family still caused harm to urban communities that we were part of. While I held some of those same family members in high esteem hoping they would change and become greater than the negative thing they had done. In some of them, the past overshadows them like a dark cloud that is suspended over them. And for some, they continue their economic pursuits because the quest to prevail has yet to stop for us as a community of people. For I admit that I am complicit in respecting their views and accepting their past transgressions against our own kinds by standing next to them and by never challenging their status quo. The truth is I do regret what has happened in Birmingham and other cities alike. The ghost of what was once powerfully spiritual black communities which supported each other from overreaching police and white-privileged policies. I feel remorse for the lack of love that was once poured into these communities in which now you see many dilapidated homes and the cup of greed being filled for few at the expense of the many. I cannot promise this won’t continue to happen because it continues as you read this. But I can promise to hold myself and others around me accountable and call them to and myself to a higher standard. A higher standard that is not only tolerable but outspokenly supportive of different races, genders, sexual orientations, political views, religious views, and the many other perspectives in the manner of philosophy and ideology. I myself cannot restore what has been lost or stolen because I do not own or possess which has been lost or stolen. I cannot recompensate with money I did not inherit. But I can gain a sense of restitution through perspectives that do not reek of greed or non-communal values. I can gain a sense of restitution by learning and understanding personal responsibility and self-reliance while giving my time and experience to the underserved communities. Author and memoir writer Wendy Liu stated that it had been said, “what’s good for America is good for the world.” (source) To all people of color, I am sorry that I have been sleep at the wheel and allowed America, and thus the world, to believe that the racist, sexist, anti-feminist, and the unequitable social structure that this country’s framework is based upon is good for it, and thus good for the world. I sincerely hope that my apology will be accepted but even more so, my progressive actions will be the bearer of my conscious and perspectives.

BEST REGARDS, A.B.

#POC BlackHistory Accountability Apology Letter Justice Peace Honest

[aspoonofsugar]

I hope it's okay to ask, what do you think about the theory of Zhang, Luzurus and Tserriednich being illegitimate children? Do you think is a red herring or something plausible?

Hello anon!

Tbh I have never heard of this theory before now, so I don’t really have many thoughts on it. I guess that when it comes to Zhang Lei, all comes down to it:

Here, he might be referring to Onior as his father either because he considers him his father and has a special relationship with him or because Onior is in fact Zhang Lei’s biological father.

In short, I can see why this theory might have been born in reguards to Zhang Lei, but I don’t understand why it should reguard Lazarus and Tserriednich as well. Is it because they have, like Zhang Lei, ties with the other two mafia families? It could be possible that both Onior and Brocco Li have had illegitimate children with two queens and that they have tried to take care of their kids by having them become close to their respective mafia families. Assuming that is the case, though, I think we should make some considerations.

1) I wonder if Nasubi knows about this. After all, he, as a King, can have multiple kids with multiple wives and even with lovers. However, I doubt queens are given the same degree of freedom and, even if they were, their half-children should not have any right to the throne. After all, Morena is Nasubi’s own daughter and yet she has no right because she was not born from one of Nasubi’s wives. However, it is also possible that Nasubi might be willing to close an eye both to avoid scandals and because it might be an unwritten rule of Kakin, as the second consideration will try to explore.

2) Onior and Brocco Li have utilitaristic reasons to support the princes tied with their mafia families. This is true both if Zhang Lei and Lazarus are their biological children and if they are not. That said, if they are, I can see their births having to do more with interest than with love. Brocco Li and Onior could have had a biological son among the princes, so that he would have represented the interests of their respective families. This would be an interesting twists because it would show how the rule according to which “second rate” children have to stay uninvolved in politics is clearly a farce.

In short, if the theory is true, it could be used to highlight the hypocrisy of the Royal Family and how intertwined with the underworld it actually is. It is precisely against this hypocrisy that Morena is rebelling. As a matter of fact she has the same blood of her half-siblings, but, simply because her mother was not a queen (and we have seen how queens can be of modest origins, like Oito), she is considered second rated. If Lazarus and Zhang Lei are indeed illegitimate children (and even more illegitimate than her, in a sense), but are still treated as princes and tolerated, then I can see it exasperating Morena’s hatred.

Speaking of her, Morena and Tserriednich seem to break the pattern. As a matter of fact, Morena is Tserriednich’s half-sister and not his mother. I personally think that Tserriednich being associated to the Heil-Ly family has to do with both him and Morena being foils of Kurapika and Chrollo, as I have written here:

Morena is set-up to be a foil to both Chrollo and Kurapika.

She and Chrollo are both outcasts and both are leading a group. However, their powers are somehow opposite. As a matter of fact Chrollo steals others’ powers and has stolen even the ones of his comrades in order to fight Hisoka. Morena’s power on the other hand lets her comrades gain new abilities the more they kill.

What is more, both her and Chrollo have religious imagery associated with them since Chrollo is associated to both Jesus and the devil and Morena is wearing a crown made of thorns exactly like the one Jesus wore. Moreover they both encourage their respective groups to create chaos. And they both don’t really care about their own lives.

Kurapika and Morena are foils in the sense that they are both doing the same thing, but in completely different ways.

If we consider what is happening in the first tier and in the lower ones we can notice how Morena and Kurapika are being the most active players right now and how, in a sense, what they are doing is similar. As a matter of fact they are both trying to make normal people develop nen abilities, but they go at it in opposite ways.

Kurapika is trying to do so in a pacific way. He is using Bill’s power, which isn’t particularly dangerous, so that people can easily awake without hurting themselves or others. Kurapika’s objective in doing so is trying to preserve the status quo, so that the princes can survive until the boat reaches its destination.

Whereas Morena is trying to have people develop hatsu abilities through violence which specifically targets the status quo and the society Morena herself was born in. Let’s also underline how the members of her group are considered civilians and not mafia members.

Now, the way nen is used by these two characters is interesting to me. As a matter of fact nen has been introduced since the beginning as something which must be kept secret and which only few people know about. However, both Kurapika and Morena are trying to increase the number of individuals who can use this incredibly strong and dangerous power. Actually, Kurapika is doing so even if it goes against the rules of the hunter organization.

And here:

At the same time Tserriednich’s power reminds me a little of Emperor Time. As a matter of fact both powers are connected to time and to seconds passing specifically.

For now I don’t see many similarities other than a generic connection to time, but from this we can already see how the two characters have a completely different concept of the value of their respective times.

Kurapika doesn’t care at all and is ready to throw it away in exchange of a power which can help him to reach his objective.

Tserriednich on the other hand is incredibly self-entitled and his power basically lets him gain ten seconds for free.

I think this difference mirrors Kurapika and Tserriednich’s opposite and extreme mentalities. Kurapika doesn’t care about his life and ends up putting himself in danger for others, while Tserriednich cares too much about his own persona and can’t see others (for example he never suspected Theta could be planning to kill him and is genuinely surprised when he sees it happening).

This difference is also shown in the current chapters where Tserriednich is concentrated on his own training and doesn’t care much about others, while Kurapika is trying to give the greatest number of people possible the chance to use nen and he is ready to use ET in order to do so. This despite the fact that, as Bill points out, there are no guarantees that the people Kurapika helped will help him in return.

However, since they are both set up to be foils of two major characters, they will probably foil each other as well. If that is the case, Tserriednich being an illegitimate child could come back to bite him in the ass, especially because of the high opinion he has of himself.

Finally, if this theory is true, it might be interesting if it played some role in breaking the rules of the succession war. After all, it has been stated by Kurapika that the war is happening because of a system of vows and conditions. This is why Kurapika thinks that if even one person is able to forfeit, the whole system will crumble on itself. As for now, we have seen two attempts to give up on the war, but they both failed. On one hand Halkenburg tried to rationally not take part in the war, but uncounsciously he wanted to fight to change his country. On the other hand Kachou and Fugetsu tried to run away, but failed. In the end, it is possible we will have a successful attempt. Who knows? Maybe having some illegitimate children taking part in the war will help breaking the system.

In conclusion, I do not know if this theory is true. So far, the most convincing evidence is Zhang Lei’s conversation with Onior, but it could be explained in another way. That said, it could be an interesting way to use the mafia family motif in relation to the three princes. This is why, in my answer, I mostly rambled about some interesting implications of this theory and how it could influence characters and themes. Basically, I am neutral to it so far. It might be true, but there is not a ton of evidence.

Thank you for the ask!

#hxh #hxh meta #succession war arc #dark continent arc #asksfullofsugar #anonymous #hxh theory