#otp: you were the one time i let love weaken me

[bluerose5]

2, 5, 9, and 22 for whichever OTP you like 😊

From the OTP Relationship Asks. Probably not surprising to anyone, given my recent posts, but I'll go with Astarion & Zevran. Sorry in advance for this essay of a post. 😁

2. Any sleep habits either had to get used to? Given that dnd lore consists of elves going into trances/meditative states rather than sleeping, I'd say that I still see Zevran taking on a more relaxed position during rest, preferring to curl up with blankets and pillows around him. I've seen quite a few posts that point out Astarion not even having a proper bedroll in his tent, so I think Astarion would have to grow accustomed to the idea that it's okay to be comfortable during that time. It's okay to let his guard down and be close to another, probably resulting in some eventual cuddles, but both of them are definitely the types to keep daggers hidden close at hand, no matter what. If they do get comfortable enough to spend their rests together, Zevran might need time to get used to the differences in body temperature. He strikes me as the type to get goosebumps at the slightest breeze and whine about it being freezing cold, so he'd start off in blanket burritos when they snuggle until he gets acclimated. Astarion feels a little guilty about it but tries not to linger on it too much because Zevran enjoys being close to him and he loves how warm Zevran is.

5. What is their love language? I know this might be a little predictable, since gifts were a thing for all companions in Origins, but I genuinely believe gift-giving/receiving would be Zevran’s love language. Items have power. They have practicality, but most importantly, they have meaning. I think it's especially telling that he tells you how sentimental items were taken from them in the Crows if found, including his mother's gloves, but he tries to show his appreciation to his LI by gifting them an earring he's kept for presumably years since his first kill. Plus, he even tells you he's never received a gift. To be given something special without expectation of anything in return...? I think he'd eat that up.

Astarion, on the other hand? I'm leaning towards words of affirmation. I feel like you see it a lot in the dark urge romance scenes, since a lot of what they're going through can be viewed as similar, depending on how you play. But I think he sees power in words, just as much as actions, even when those words are empty. However, once he gets to say words like "I love you" or "You're amazing" without having to do so for the sake of manipulation, he means it, and I think that he celebrates that he can express himself so openly and genuinely once he's free.

9. How are their personalities different? I had to think through this one a little more since it would be easier to say how they're alike, but I would say —going back to the previous post— Zevran has a stronger sense of sentimentality than Astarion at the moment. Zevran, in spite of what he was taught, forms strong attachments to things and ideas. He's not afraid to talk about his homesickness, for example, and what he misses from Antiva, good or bad. It could be said that this might be because Astarion hasn't simply had the chance to form those attachments over the centuries, given that all he was capable of doing was Cazador's bidding.

Also, I just see Zevran as being less concerned about appearances overall. Race, rank, title. None of that stuff concerns him much. No one is above dying at his blade, after all, and he seems pretty unimpressed when attending events among nobility that require acting on any type of ceremony or elevating one above others, such as the celebration at the end of Origins or even when you give Cailan a funeral pyre in the Return to Ostagar dlc.

Meanwhile, Astarion has a lot of ambition to the point where it weakens his sense of empathy in comparison, but that ambition is tangled up in a sense of survival. While Zevran isn't above speaking up for others like the Dalish or the mages if I remember correctly, when it's clear that a lot of innocents are set to die for the crimes of others, Astarion isn't above sacrificing others' free will or lives (such as when he suggests taking over the cult or killing the spawn to ascend) when it benefits him. But his "ambition" is merely a means of gaining power, so that he can exert that power in ways where others won't pose a threat to him. His approach to survival is very much at times, "If it doesn't affect me personally, then it's not my problem." Not saying he's entirely incapable of empathy, just that it's often lesser due to that mentality.

22. Who gets more easily embarrassed?

Oh, Astarion. Definitely. He's good at putting on his act of being unbothered, but there are definitely times when he seems to get caught off guard by stuff others say. I know there are times when Tav/Durge can say something silly or unhinged, and he scolds them even if teasingly. He also seems to get flustered when you take more genuine dialogue options when he fully expects shallow responses. Zevran, my beloved Zevran, just has so little shame, even beyond his defense/coping mechanisms. He says the craziest shit. First thing that comes to mind is him calling the urn of sacred ashes a vase or his infamous "children thrown at high speeds are dangerous" line. My man just has no fucks to give. He is here for a good time, and he speaks his mind. It'll take a lot to embarrass him. 😆

#dragon age #bg3 #zevran #astarion #zevstarion #crossover ship #bluerose answers #bluerose rambles

[honorarycassowary]

for the bingo: sauron and melkor

Sauron

Every so often I think about that tumblr post that went something like, "If you don't want people to ship your villains, you need to leave them unseen. Nobody writes slash fic about SAURON." (The rest of this post is Sauron slash fic justification.)

The #1 thing I think about re: Sauron is his basically entirely offscreen character arc. There are so many moments when he could chosen to do things differently! And the fact that so much of it is just stated to happen and has to be viewed through inference is actually a bonus for me, since it allows so many contradicting headcanons and fanfic to develop.

He was one of Aule's most powerful and trusted Maiar - how did his departure affect the other Maiar? Did any of them choose to follow Melkor because of him?

What were those early years with Melkor like? Tolkien wrote about Melkor gradually becoming more twisted into hate and cruelty and weakening as he poured his power into distorting Arda. I imagine the early years as Sauron and Melkor pushing the boundaries of what God intended, doing forbidden mad science, etc.

Then Melkor is captured and goes to naughty angel jail and Sauron singlehandedly maintains all his evil operations waiting for him to return. He didn't know Melkor would come back! Was he experimenting and developing the desire to rule the world in his name? Keeping everything in perfect stasis for his master? (This is also a character dynamic seen over in my Transformers ships with Megatron/Shockwave, which also abbreviates to M/S. COINCIDENCE??? Most certainly.)

His change of heart after the War of Wrath. It's FASCINATING to me that he spent millennia doing horrible sadistic magic science and then stopped! Was this purely out of fear of the Valar I think he genuinely intended for this to be a new leaf, but "I want to do good things now. No I don't want to think about any of the bad things I've done or help fix them or unpack any of that. Let's just act like this didn't happen." is an inherently untenable framework for a redemption. That said, I do wonder who he helped and when he went back to his old ways. The first time he ran into humans who weren't overawed by his divinity and questioned him? thearrogantemu's These Gifts That You Have Given Me proposes that he made it all the way to Ost-in-Edhil with good intentions which is so compelling to me.

Celebrimbor. Sorry dude you would not like to be OTPed with the guy who murdered you but them's the breaks. I love all permutations of their relationship. Sauron scheming to murder him all along? Give me all the dramatic irony. Sauron coming in with evil intentions but deciding Celebrimbor is so fascinating they should be bound together in a parody of love? Sure thing. Sauron actually loved him, flipped out when Celebrimbor was less enthused about loving a guy who enabled the murder of at minimum hundreds of people he knew? Delicious.

It is fucking hilarious to me that the Valar couldn't capture Sauron after the War of Wrath and Numenor - a kingdom of more-or-less regular old humans - kicked his ass so hard he had to go live with them as a prisoner. Comedy about an angel as old as the universe forced to hang out with Iron Age courtiers when.

That said, there is so much horror in you know ... capturing the head of a foreign kingdom and they're not human, they look human but they're wrong, and their very soul is permeating the land you live in and changing it.

Also I'm interested in the whole Melkor-worship thing he had set up. This certainly was a way to destroy and humiliate Numenorean culture, but I wonder if he thought/hoped that sufficient worship could be used to free Melkor.

There's some really good meta out there about Sauron forging the ring fundamentally preventing him from ever growing or changing any more. This is made physical when his 'death' after Numenor prevents him from shapeshifting but fundamentally it was there before; when he made the Ring to concentrate his power, he concentrated his soul as it was at the time - bent towards conquering, towards deception, towards Melkor and his domains - and made it static. After this, he can't redeem himself, even in the halfway, eyes-averted way he did after the First Age. Jewelry: not even once.

There's not a good place to put this, but I love the Finrod vs. Sauron song battle in the Lay of Leithian. Hands down my favorite part.

Melkor

I'm first and foremost a Sauron fan and therefore pretty much all my Melkor thoughts are already written up above. If I was invested in the other Valar, maybe this would be different - I need multiple characters to bounce around together like upsetting pinballs for real fannish thought to happen, and unfortunately for Melkor Sauron is better at interacting with other people.

#liesmyth #cassowary conversation

[thjslove]

gotham + lyrics · wildest dreams by taylor swift

#dcedit #dctvedit #gothamedit #nygmobblepotedit #nygmobblepot #gotham #oswald cobblepot #edward nygma #otp: you were the one time i let love weaken me #penguin x riddler #mine #* #gothamandlyrics #i have an idea w/ a scorpions song too but i gif once every 4 months now so...

[ofmvoonlight]

A E S T H E T I C || NYGMOBBLEPOT 

Cinnamon in my teeth From your kiss, you're touching me All the pills that you take Violet, blue, green, red to keep me at arm's length don't work You try to push me out, but I just find my way back in Violet, blue, green, red to keep me out, I win;

There's things I wanna say to you, but I'll just let you live Like if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did There's things I wanna talk about, but better not to give But if you hold me without hurting me You'll be the first who ever did

@volatilejoy

#(otp; You were the one time I let love weaken me)

[an-eldritch-peredhel]

Dior for the character ask?

Oh boy! I've been thinking about him a lot lately, so this is good timing.

How I feel about this character:

Conflicted. Actually, no. I like him, a lot. The conflict comes from pretty much the only thing he's know for: refusing to give up the silmaril, and honestly I think it's understandable. Dior grew up with the Feanorions (at least C&C) portrayed as cartoony villains who plot evilly and cause some destruction but are soundly beaten and ride away in shame while the good guys win and get the girl (or guy), and I don't think the Kinslaying was emphasized. Basically: it happened centuries ago, on a different continent, and while Luthien probably harbored resentment over that I think the whole Quest incident would weigh heavier in both their minds. And of course: the Feanorians were significantly weakened by the Nirnaeth.

So I don't think Dior saw them as a threat: at least not to the extent that they were. That was (obviously) a mistake, one probably made out of not-insignificant pride, anger, and naivety, but justified, again. Dior is young- maybe not that much for a human, but certainly for an elf. I'm not sure if the timeline exactly lines up (does it ever?) but I think that B+L died around time that E&E 1.0 were born, which was only a few years before Elwing was, and then the Kinslaying. So I see his thought process as going something like: "The dicks that tried to kill my dad and kidnap my mom are asking me to give up the silmaril- claiming it's theirs by birthright- or else: even though it's part of my inheritance because my parents managed to steal it from Morgoth and they couldn't beat him even with an army. And now my parents are dead and they were too scared to threaten my mom for it but see me as a weaker target and think I'll give it up? Screw you, screw this, screw off!" That Nauglamir is probably cursed doesn't help. Also, I'm not even sure he'd know about the Oath...

All the people I ship romantically with this character:

Nimloth? He's definitely not someone I really think about in relation to romance much, and I'm not a huge shipper in general unless I get convinced by either fanon or canon (or both *cough*russingon*cough*). I have been developing Nimloth more lately though, and their romance is very sweet- lots of mutual pining and "wow that person is so incredible compared to me, I don't have a chance". Very fluffy romcom style.

I did read a fic (that I can't find ;-;) where he and Celebrimbor are in a pre-relationship which was interesting, but I think it only really worked in that AU.

My non-romantic OTP for this character:

I might be misinterpreting this question, but my entirely headcanoned relationship between him and his uncle Daeron makes me sob every time I think about it. This post talks some about their relationship and my specific headcanons for Daeron, but in short I think it was Daeron who taught Dior how to be an elf, and that he had a kind of godfather role. I'm working on a post with headcanons for the Spooky Family's missing names, and I have Dior as partially named after Daeron (Aludae. I refuse to believe B+L would name him 'Elu's Heir' so Eluchil's an after-name.) and they call eachother Dae-pin and Daer-dae (little shadow and big shadow) and my heart squishes every time I think about it. I just adore. Let there be ONE generation of ONE family with MOSTLY HEALTHY DYNAMICS.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

He's human, 100%. I have a draft about this, but the main force behind my reasoning is "it makes the math easier". However! Luthien's magic and whatnot isn't tied to her race, so he still gets that passed down and has some peredhel-ish perks. On the other hand, because I hate causing unhappy endings, he does get to copy his mom and share his true-love's fate because if Tuor gets to be immortal so does he. I wrote about it more eloquently at the end of the linked post above. *hannah montana voice* It's the beeessst of both worlds.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

...You know what I'm gonna say. I wish he'd given up the Silmaril. I have an everything is better and less stuff hurts au percolating in my head where Luthien and Maedhros becoming friends pretty much saves the world, and I could see him giving it up in that case. In canon... unfortunately not.

#ask game #character asks #dior eluchil

[qqueenofhades]

If/when they make a Joe/Nicky prequel movie, what are some of the Dos and Don’ts for them, with regards to historical accuracy. Like, what do you think they should include, and what do you think they should avoid?

Oof. This is a GREAT question, and also designed to give me a chance to ramble on in a deeply, deeply self-indulgent fashion. That is now what will proceed to happen. Consider yourself warned. So if they were miraculously to be like “well that qqueenofhades person on tumblr seems like she knows what she’s talking about, let’s hire her to consult on this production!”, here are some of the things I would tell them.

First off, a question I have in fact asked my students when teaching the crusades in class is whether you could actually show the sack of Jerusalem on screen. Like... if you’re making a film about the First Crusade, what kind of choices are you going to make? What narrative viewpoint are you going to uphold throughout the story? Are you actually going to show a slaughter of Muslim and Jewish inhabitants that some chroniclers described as causing enough blood to reach up to the knees of horses? (Whether it actually did this is beside the point; the point is that the sack went far beyond the accepted conventions of warfare and struck everybody involved in it as particularly horrific.) Because when you’re making a film about the crusades, you are also making it by nature for a modern audience that has particular understandings of Christian/Muslim conflict, religious warfare and/or tolerance, the War on Terror, the modern clash over ISIS, Trump’s Muslim ban, and so forth. The list goes on and on. So you’re never making a straight, unbiased historical adaptation, even if you’re going off the text of primary sources. You’re still constructing it and presenting it in a deliberate and curated fashion, and you can bet that whichever way you come down, your audience will pick up on that.

Let’s take the most recent example of a high-profile crusades film: Kingdom of Heaven from 2005. I’ve written a book chapter on how the narrative choices of KoH, aside from its extensive fictionalization of its subject matter to start with, make it crystal clear that it is a film made by a well-meaning Western liberal filmmaker (Ridley Scott) four years after 9/11 and two years after the invasion of Iraq, when the sympathy from 9/11 was wearing off and everyone saw America/Great Britain and the Bush/Blair coalition overreaching itself in yet another arrogant imperial adventure into the Middle East. Depending on how old you are, you may or may not remember the fact that Bush explicitly called the War on Terror a “crusade” at the start, and then was quickly forced to walk it back once it alarmed his European allies (yes, back then, as bad as America was, it still did have those) with its intellectual baggage. They KNEW exactly what images and tropes they were invoking. It is also partly why medieval crusade studies EXPLODED in popularity after 9/11. Everyone recognized that these two things had something to do with each other, or they made the connection somehow. So anyone watching KoH in 2005 wasn’t really watching a crusades film (it is set in the late 1180s and dramatizes the surrender of Jerusalem to Saladin) so much as a fictional film about the crusades made for an audience explicitly IN 2005. I have TONS to say on this subject (indeed, if you want a copy of my book chapter, DM me and I’ll be happy to send it.)

Ridley Scott basically sets it up as the Christian and Muslim secular leaders themselves aren’t evil, it’s all the religious fanatics (who are all made Templars, including Guy de Lusignan, going back to the “evil Templar” trope started by Sir Walter Scott and which we are all so very familiar with from Dan Brown and company). Orlando Bloom’s character shares a name (Balian de Ibelin) but very little else with the eponymous real-life crusader baron. One thing Scott did do very well was casting an actual and well-respected Syrian actor (Ghassan Massoud) to play Saladin and depicting him in essential fidelity to the historical figure’s reputed traits of justice, fairness, and mercy (there’s some article by a journalist who watched the film in Beirut with a Muslim audience and they LOVED the KoH Saladin). I do give him props for this, rather than making the Evil Muslim into the stock antagonist. However, Orlando Bloom’s Balian is redeemed from the religious extremist violence of the Templars (shorthand for all genuinely religious crusaders) by essentially being an atheistic/agnostic secular humanist who wants everyone to get along. As I said, this is a film about the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq made three years after 9/11 more than anything else, and you can really see that.

That said, enough about KoH, back to this presumable Joe/Nicky backstory. You would obviously run into the fact that it’s SUPER difficult to make a film about the crusades without offending SOMEBODY. The urge to paint in broad strokes and make it all about the evil Westerners invading is one route, but it would weaken the moral complexity of the story and would probably make it come off as pandering to guilty white liberal consciences. Are we gonna touch on the many decades of proto-crusading ventures in Iberia, Sicily, North Africa, and other places, and how the eleventh century, especially under Pope Gregory VII, made it even thinkable for a Christian to be a holy warrior in the first place? (It was NOT normal beforehand.) How are we going to avoid the “lololol all religion sucks and makes people do crazy things” axe to grind favoured by So Very Smart (tm) internet atheists? Yes, we have to demonstrate the ultimate horror of the crusade and the flawed premises it was based on, but we can’t do that by just showing the dirty, religiously zealot medieval people doing that because they don’t know any better and are being cynically manipulated in God’s Name. In other words (and the original TOG film did this very well) we can’t position ourselves to laugh at or mock the crusader characters or feel confident in looking down on them for being Dumb Zealots. They have to be relatable enough that we realize we could BE (and in fact already ARE) them, and THEN you slide into the horror and what compels them to do those kinds of things, and THAT’S when it hits. Because take a look at the news. This is happening around us right now.

Obviously, as I was doing in my First Crusade chapter in DVLA, a lot of this also has to spend time centering the Muslim point of view, the way they reacted to the crusade, the ways in which Yusuf as an Isma’ili Shia Muslim (Kaysani is the name of a branch of Isma’ili Shi’ites, he has a definite historical context and family lineage, and hence is almost surely, as I wrote him, a Fatimid from Egypt) is likewise not just A Stock Muslim. In this case, obviously: Get actual Muslims on the set to advise about the details. Don’t make stupid and/or obvious mistakes. Don’t necessarily make the Muslims less faithful or less virtuous than the Christians (even if this is supposed to praise them as being “less fanatic” than those bad religious Catholics). Don’t tokenize or trivialize their reaction to something as horrific as the sack of Jerusalem, and don’t just use dead brown bodies as graphic visual porn for cheap emotional points. Likewise, it goes without saying, and I don’t think they would anyway, but OH MY GOD DON’T MAKE THIS INTO GAME OF THRONES GRIMDARK!!!! OH MY GOD!!! THERE IS BEAUTY AND THERE IS LIGHT AND THERE IS POETRY AND THAT’S WHY IT HURTS SO MUCH WHEN IT’S DESTROYED! AND THE CHOICES THAT PEOPLE MAKE TO DESTROY THOSE THINGS HAVE TO BE TERRIFYINGLY PLAUSIBLE AND FAMILIAR, BECAUSE OH MY GOD!!

Next, re: Nicolo. Evidently he is a priest or a former priest or something of the sort in the graphic novel, which becomes a bit of a problem if we want him to actually FIGHT in the crusades for important and/or shallow and/or OTP purposes. (I don’t know if they address this somehow or Greg Rucka is not a medieval historian or whatever, but never mind.) It was a Major Thing that priests could not carry weapons, at least and especially bladed weapons. (In the Bayeux Tapestry, we have Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, fighting at the battle of Hastings with a truncheon because he’s a clergyman and can’t have a sword). They were super not supposed to shed blood, and a broadsword (such as the type that Nicky has and carries and is clearly very familiar with) is a knight’s weapon, not a clergyman’s. The thing about priests was that they were not supposed to get their hands dirty with physical warfare; they could (and often did) accompany crusade armies, bishops were secular overlords and important landholders, monks and hermits and other religious preachers were obviously part of a religious expedition, and yes, occasionally some priests would break the rules and fight in battle. But this was an exception FAR more than the rule. So if we’re going by accuracy, we have Nicky as a priest who doesn’t actively fight and doesn’t have a sword, we have him as a rule-breaking priest with a sword (which would have to be addressed, and the Templars, who were basically armed monks, weren’t founded until 1119 so he can’t be one of those yet if this is still 1099) or we just skip the priest part and have him as a crusader with a sword like any other soldier. If he was in fact a priest, he also wouldn’t be up to the same standard of sending into battle. Boys, especially younger sons of the nobility, often entered the church at relatively early ages (12 or 13), where it was treated as a career, and hence they stopped training in arms. So if Nicky is actually out there fighting and/or getting killed by Yusuf several times for Important Purposes, he’s... almost surely not a priest.

Iirc, they’ve already changed a few things from the graphic novel (I haven’t read it, but this is what I’ve heard) so they can also tweak things to make a new backstory or a hybrid-new backstory in film-verse. So once we’ve done all the above, we still have to decide how to handle the actual sack of Jerusalem and massacre of its inhabitants, the balance between violence comparable to the original TOG film and stopping short of being exploitative (which I think they would do well), and the aftermath of that and the founding of the new Latin Christian kingdom. It would have to, as again the original film does very well, avoid prioritizing the usual players and viewpoints in these events, and dig into presenting the experiences of the marginalized and way in which ordinary people are brought to the point of doing these things. It doesn’t (and frankly shouldn’t) preach at us that U.S. Invasions Of The Middle East Are Bad (especially since obviously none of the characters/people/places/events here are American at all). And as I said already but bears repeating: my god, don’t even THINK about making it GOT and marketing it as Gritty Dramatic Medieval History, You Know It’s Real Because They’re Dirty, Violent, and Bigoted!

Also, a couple tags I saw pop up were things like “Period-Typical Racism” and “Period-Typical Homophobia” and mmm okay obviously yes there are these elements, but what exactly is “period typical?” Does it mean “using these terms just because you figure everyone was less tolerant back then?” We know that I, with my endless pages of meta on medieval queer history, would definitely side-eye any attempts to paint these things as Worse Than Us, and the setting alone would convey a sense of the conflict without having to add on gratuitous microaggressions. I basically think the film needs to be made exactly like the original: centering the gay/queer perspectives of marginalized people and people of color, resisting the urge for crass jokes at the expense of the identity of its characters, and approaching it with an awareness of the deep complexity and personal meaning of these things to people in terms of the historical moment we’re in, while not making a film that ONLY prizes our response and our current crises. Because if we’re thinking about these historical genealogies, the least we can do (although we so often aren’t) is to be honest.

Thanks! I LOVED this question.

#history #medieval history #kingdom of heaven #joe x nicky #long post #persephone-rose-r #ask #the old guard meta

[elias-veturius-laia-of-serra]

A Sky Beyond The Storm: SPOILERY Review

*!!BEWARE!! A Sky Beyond The Storm Spoilers below. And it’s not just a little of them. It is FULL BLOWN COMPLETE SPOILERS! SO BEWARE! DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVEN’T READ A SKY BEYOND THE STORM!*

[CAUTION] This is all my opinion so please don’t leave anything negative. Or send hate or think this is a welcome post to start arguing. I’m only posting this cause sadly my friends have not finished the book yet and it’s been five days since I’ve finished and I have yet to be able to explore how I fully feel about the book. Thankfully writing this tired me out and completely reflected everything I feel! It was the perfect outlet! I also wrote it all in one go just pouring all my emotions out so if the grammar is bad or some things don’t make sense. I’m sorry! I’ll be sure to edit this at some point ❤️

------------------------------------------------------------

Wow.

Five years. I had stuck to this series for five years and it’s always given me love, heartache, pain, loss, but most importantly hope. 

I want to start off by talking about how happy I was with how Laia’s arc was handled. Usually when you have a “weak” and frightened protagonist their growth is mainly focused on how quick they can shed that image and because something else entirely. How they can become an ultra badass that is able to hack and slice through their enemies and become this killer warrior machine, but Laia Of Serra is not a killer. And that’s been reiterated throughout the books. She feels too much, cares too much, and loves too much. She mourns the for any lives lost even if it is the enemy. She hates taking lives cause she sees no reason to take one even if it is for the greater good. As shown in Torch and Sky, She cries after she accidentally that man. She’s wrecked with guilt when she accidentally kills that jinn. At the people who fall during this war. Laia Of Serra isn’t a killer. She’s hope. She’s love. She’s understanding. And many people do see that as weakness but I love that Laia is able to harness these emotions that make her human as use it as strength. That at the end of the day she isn’t a badass savage girl who lost everything and is out for blood. She’s still just Laia and I wouldn’t have it any other way! Being a big emotional scaredy cat I am I’ve never been able to relate to the big badass skilled warriors that can take down armies of men. I wish to be like them but the reality is I’m not. So I never thought I could see myself being a hero or doing any good if the time for me to be one ever came, but Laia really conveys that strength is more than just being able to shed blood and kill people. That it’s okay to cry, to be scared, to feel sad, and be insecure. Brown girls are always so used to being silenced and taught to behave in order to survive. That’s been our story for a long time but Laia was able to turn our meekness, our fragility, our fear, and our insecurities into something strong. Into something that moves her forward, that taught her how to fight, and that  ultimately makes her victorious. The Her final scene with the Nightbringer was beautiful and utterly heartbreaking.

Which brings me to the Nightbringer.  I used to hate him so much unable to understand him. I found his anger equivalent to that of an edgy teen that got told “No” too many times. But despite his cruelty book 4 really opened my eyes. Despite all the deaths and rage Sabaa has managed to also convey all his loneliness, his sadness, his hopelessness, his loss, and how all this pain had driven him to believe this was the only way he’d be able to be at peace. To get rid of the world that had been so cold to him. To get rid of a world that made him feel unaccepted and had taken away everything that mattered to him until all he had left was the broken pieces of himself with no one there to help him pick them up. I loved the Nightbringer here. I learned to respect him so much. He’s carried so much pain and loneliness for thousands of years in hopes to gain back what he has lost. I was finally able to sympathize with him and much like Laia - I didn’t hate him anymore. Couldn’t hate him. Of course what he did was wrong but it’s hard to wish more unfortunate things upon someone whose whole life has been nothing but misfortune. I loved his story with Rehmat. Their love though mentioned briefly was a beautiful thing and I found I wanted nothing more than him to be able to be with her again and to be able to feel that love again. I used to cringe and loathe the idea of Nightbringer and Laia being romantic but this book opened my eyes into seeing that that isn’t it at all. I mean yes he is in love with her but that’s just the kind of person he is. He loves. He’s the beloved. He has many loves. As his queen once said, he loves too much. So it isn’t about sparkly forbidden romance. It’s the fact that Meherya had love for all things and to be betrayed because of it had hardened his heart. Laia knows what this feels like. So to see her hold him and tell him it’s okay. That his feelings are valid and the world turned it’s back on him first, but he can’t blame all life for that. That she knows deep within him he still loves, he still hopes, and he must hold onto that. Skies, nearly made me cry. Then by the end when he is able to tell her goodbye with a hand to her cheek and she knows despite everything he still loves her - I nearly started bawling. Because he truly is the beloved and he did not deserve all those who took his love then basically spat in his face. I was happy to finally see him be able to reunite with Rehmat. His one true love and his only queen. Cause I know through her and finally leaving this world - he will be able to finally be at peace.

Now onto the next character. Elias. WHEEEEW! He was as cold as Sabaa promised. So distant and stoic. Reading about him through Laia’s P.O.V. was so heartbreaking. Yet reading through his was ALMOST worse. Where as Laia can’t find her Elias we are able to see little cracks of it. He still looks at her for too long. Lingers at the thought of her for too long. His heart beats faster when she is around when it shouldn’t. He remembers things he shouldn’t. Being around her is too hard because she is everything he had originally fought for. Inner Elias still sees her as his home and his freedom. However his cold demeanor was nearly too much for me! I even almost contemplated unstanning my favorite OTP in the world when he left her to the jinn. Though I think a lot of that mainly has to do with the fact cause we see how much he loves her. He’s risked so much for her so to see him abandon her was like a slap in the face and truly showed how much he has changed, but thankfully there was hundreds of pages left for him to make up for it. And of course in an Elias fashion he did. When the nightbringer had her captive he couldn’t get himself to leave her again. When he saw Laia scratched up after falling into a river and his thoughts immediately thought of ways to defeat this river (I cackled). When he told her he wouldn’t be able to help if she were to get in trouble trying to steal the Nightbringer’s scythe and yet he came in seconds the moment she called to him cause nothing else mattered as soon as he heard her voice. When Elias realized Mauth had completely weakened his first reaction was to run to Laia and while she had been frozen haunted by realizing what she had done it was Elias who ran in front of the storm to get her away from it and nearly sacrificing his life in order to keep her safe. I mean HOW CAN I NOT FORGIVE HIM AFTER ALL THAT!? I couldn’t stop the emotions running through when he was able to finally meet his father. When he was able to see the life he could’ve had if war and pain hadn’t tainted it. Then his final strive to live. Him fully coming back as Elias Veturius and chanting Always Victorious to come back to the world of the living. It was everything! Elias has been a death magnet throughout this series. His whole has made his hands drenched in blood and making him live a life so dirty that he believes at many moments is a life that isn’t worth living anymore. That he’s too damaged. Too callous. Too tainted to be considered worthy of anything, but in the end when the time came he pushed to life. He fought to be more than his mistakes. To be more than a symbol of death. He chose to live. 

I will continue with the characters but here’s a short break to speak about my most prized possession: Elaia. So I already explained a good chunk in Elias’s snippet, but we ALL know they need their own portion for one to get their feelings out more clearly. Elias and Laia’s love as usual isn’t easy and broke me time and time again. One minute my heart flutters and I’m on the edge of my seat in hope and then the next it’s like I get a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. Their relationship was especially rough in the beginning. Elias pulled away consistently and though watching Laia try her hardest to break through was admirable it hurt all the more every time it failed. Yet even through all the hurt my heart still fluttered. The way she purposely said things, or did certain things, in order to get a rise out of him was such a delight to watch. Elias and his rocks ended with both Laia and I sad but I still can’t help how wholesome it felt to see them banter. Laia sitting on the boulder in the middle of his “workout”, him casually hoisting her over his shoulder, putting her down, and just to have her spring back up and follow him to continue the conversation. Who knew seeing two people talk about pets could get a giggle out of me. The last three hundred pages I’d say are the best. Cause this is when the Soul Catcher slowly begins to soften up. He lets himself care about Laia more. Lets himself get lost in her more. I had to put the book down after the mango scene just to catch my breath! I won’t lie and pretend I didn’t enjoy all the steamy scenes. I did and nearly fainted at every single one of them, but it was the soft moments between Soul Catcher and Laia that stood out the most. When she was sad and he’d hold her, the way he was so attached to the armlet that thought that he had lost it made him tear his cabin apart, when he went to find her to tell her to leave the waiting place but couldn’t help but stare at her instead, telling her he prefers being called Elias from her, still putting her first then then disguising it saying he is only doing it for his duty to the ghosts, and the way the old him springs up constantly whenever she’s around. Every little detail was a hit to the heart! Especially Laia telling Elias that he had no right to dictate her emotions. He has no right to tell her how to fell. She loves him and she finds him worthy of it and he cannot take that away. He can’t make her stop loving him. It was everything to see her always declaring how much she loved him seeing as she never got to at the end of Reaper. And now she won’t let him stop hearing it. Won’t let him not know it or forget it. Even their sex scene felt more than just steamy smut. It was so wholesome as they laughed together for the first time in a long time, the way he saw her as perfect, and by the end of it to have Laia speak about how she wanted everything with him forever. It made their ending all the more sweeter. I had made so many jokes before SKY about them finally being able to do it, about them practically being married, the wooden armlet being an engagement ring, and them being endgame and hoping that at least one of these would come true. Little did I know every single one would. Little did I know that the ending I have been hoping for but was 99% sure I’d never get was exactly what I’d get and more. Sabaa Tahir has truly spoiled me and I don’t deserve it but I will thank her a million times for it!

Next Character: Helene. Oh boy. Unpopular opinion but I had a strong dislike for Helene for a long time. I thank Sabaa for giving her a P.O.V. though. Cause without it all I and many others would see is colonizer and oppressor. Evil. Wrong. Wicked. I hated Helene in the first book. Tolerated her in the second. Found her likeable in the third. Then ultimately fell in love with her in the fourth. I found book 4 Helene to be the very best Helene she could be. Her finally letting her emotions break through is what ended up captivating me. Her scene as she slayed Karkauns all the while crying gave me chills in REAPER. THAT to me was strength . THAT was what reminded me as badass as Helene is she’s still human. She falters, she makes mistakes, she cries, she wins, she loses, and it isn’t power that ultimately drives her. For her too it is love. Love for family, love for friends, and love for her people. Her friendship with Laia made my heart bloom. I wish we could’ve had more of it! I also wish we could’ve seen it develop more but I also understand that this is the last book and I’d rather spend it seeing two queens getting along then bicker like they had been in the last three books. I loved watching them tease each other, them grin while talking about blasted men, Helene feeling like she can stand taller when Laia compliments her, and Laia ultimately being the first scholar to hail her as Empress. And all her fighting scenes!? BEST FIGHTING SCENES I’VE EVER READ! Helene is ruthless, she is brutal, she isn’t afraid to be stained in blood, and will defeat anyone in her way. I found myself so excited in my reread when I saw I was approaching those scenes. She is flawless in battle and I found myself completely entrapped by her. Slicing off heads, arms, and striding into every battle with her head held high. I was about ready to fight Harper to let her be with me instead! Her P.O.V.s had actually been my least favorite through book 2 and 3. Book 4 made me so happy that I got to go from chapter to chapter like: Oh yay! Laia! Oh yay Elias! Oh yay! Helene! I was able to be excited throughout the whole thing knowing each character was going to give me something good! Also I found her a lot funnier this time around! And Lord knows how I love my women bossy, sarcastic, and blunt.  I know a lot of people are angry about her ending. I was deeply saddened by it too. I used to think as a colonizer serves her right to lose everything! Why should I feel bad when she’s scoffed at the lives of the scholars and shrugged her shoulders at slavery for the longest time but of course that ended up biting me in the ass. I understand Sabaa’s reasoning. Helene has took for the longest time. So now it has come full circle for her to experience what that feels like for the other side. All those scholars who too lost a sister, brother, mother, father, and lover that she took away without a second glance when oppressing them. I loved that Sabaa protrays it in a way that before as someone who despised her, I can’t even be happy about it. Instead I am empty. Lost. Hurt. It shows all the more how useless war and vengeance is. We think more deaths and kills will make us feel better. It does not. Instead I found myself days later still haunted by what happened between her and Avitas. And now I wish nothing more but Helene to find happiness. To have more days laughing with Laia and reluctantly letting her braid her hair and dress her up. More teasing and reminiscing between her and her once best friend, Elias. And possibly something new and exciting and fulfilling with Musa. (Which I will touch on in it’s own paragraph haha)

Next: Avitas. Hmmm. Here’s the thing. I don’t hate Avitas. His moments with the shrike were meaningful and his presence is what ultimately led to breaking through her hard exterior. He taught Helene how to be just a girl again. How to feel without being weak. How love can be strength. I loved that he was able to bring out a more vulnerable side of her and show to her that it wasn’t a weakness. Every part of her is strong. Every part of her is beautiful. Every part of her he loves. That moment especially when she declares herself as broken and his eyes are wet with tears feeling for her. That he tells her being broken cannot stop her. It just makes her all the more of a force to reckon with. He was exactly what Helene needed in this time of war. Exactly what she needed to stay tethered to the world and faithful to herself. Sadly however I couldn’t get myself to connect with him. He was so reserved, so quiet, and so serious most of the time. It was hard to gather much from him. The little cracks of his demeanor whenever he was around Helene helped soften me. His fierce loyalty to her alone and understanding that a girl like her doesn’t need protection. She can very well take care of herself but it wasn’t about that. He just loved her too much to ever stop worrying. It ached something fierce within me. His death also haunted me for days and still does. Though I think it did hurt a little less cause I wasn’t attached to him. It was hard to considering how little I feel I still know about him and his thoughts and feelings. Plus his final scene with Elias at the waiting place brought me peace. He died for the person he loved and now he gets to reunite with his family. He wanted to leave and so he did. May Avitas Harper rest in peace and never be forgotten.

Next: Darin. His death ruined me. He was the sole purpose Laia went on this journey in the first place. He was the first person to always believe in her. He was the only family she (thought) she had left. He was one of Laia’s biggest fans and nothing else mattered more to him than her. He based so much of his life pushing Laia forward and encouraging her and getting her to laugh again even during the darkest of times. The way he pinched her cheeks before bidding her goodbye, the way he went back to find Laia and fight beside her, the way he teased her about Elias making the both of us laugh, and how even in his final moments before crossing over he wanted to know how his sister was doing. If she had won. Then being able to pass in peace proudly when he found out that she had. And his final words telling Elias that if there’s one person who can make up for all the love she’s lost it’s him. He will be missed greatly. So much so!

Next: Faris. Faris has been here since the beginning His last scene with the shrike also ruined me. I had to put the book down cause I was so hurt. Faris was a giant teddy bear always spewing jokes and being a clueless but brave boy. To see him go down like that though admirable still broke me nonetheless. Especially despite knowing a lot about them I loved him and Dex very much! I also thought maybe him and Livia could have their own happy ending, but I hoped too hard ):

Next: Livia. I bet you can guess this hurt very much as well. I loved Livia so much. She was such a powerful girl thrust into this world of politics and tyrants and held her own. My love first ignited in Reaper and only shined brighter in SKY. My jaw dropped and once again the book went down when Keris killed her. I was so broken. She was so full of life, witty, brave, sweet, and just as fierce as her sister. I wished she could’ve stayed!

Next: Musa. My FAVORITE secondary character in the whole series. Words cannot describe how much I love Musa and it saddens me to see that he is so underrated. Though I’m happy that even Sabaa says that he is one of her favorites! Musa was a light in every dark moment. I’m always a sap for handsome snarky sarcastic comedic relief characters with a tragic past. I loved that he was the one to always joke first despite how much he hurts. That he was the one always encouraging those around him to fight for love even though he lost his. I loved that he called Laia little sister and how his mere presence around her could make Elias go feral. Surprisingly most of all I loved his relationship with Helene.

Now here is yet another break from character talk to talk about another pair. Musa and Helene. I know it’s wrong. Helene had just lost Avitas and they are two broken people right now. But like said just for a moment, together, they make a whole. I never even thought of a possibility between the two. It felt so random. Awkward even. Though upon my reread I can see the little hints. Musa and Helene practically spend most of the book at each other’s side. They fight together, they encourage each other, they argue, and they see each other. Two people always putting on a brave face no matter how much they hurt. I was surprised to feel myself smiling at their bickering. Helene tends to be an uptight stoic person but around Musa she can’t help but smile and laugh as easy as it is to breathe. The way she endearingly considers him pretty. Around Musa she can’t help but talk about her feelings and him to her. The way she held his hand when they found out about Nikla’s death and how even when Harper went to talk to him he still wouldn’t let go of her. And their final scene together at the end of SKY. SO MANY FEELS! I CAN’T HELP THE FLUTTER OF HOPE I FEEL! Their bickering even cuter! Their vulnerability to each other even more powerful! All the while still respecting their past loves and understanding they can still mourn and yet live and strive for more. Absolutely perfect! Seeing Helene not close herself up after yet again losing in love was such a beautiful thing to me. Her telling Musa she’d like it if he stayed and him obviously happy about it but feigning arrogance instead is so him it only makes me love him more. Makes me love them more. Makes me hope! This could just be Sabaa testing the waters but Helene does still owe him a favor and I hope to the skies above Sabaa will be giving us that tale soon!

Next Character: Keris. I loved how she was handled as well. Learning about her past explained so much and yet erased nothing. I loved being able to learn more about her. I loved being able to see all the suffering she went through that we didn’t know about that turned shaped her into the cruel person she is today. How some of her actions still can’t be fully understood cause Keris herself probably doesn’t understand it either. I love that we are able to see her point of view and understand het and yet it’s plainly obvious that Keris has made her grave. Now it’s time for her to lie in it. It’s such a painful yet satisfying thing to see her reunite with her mother’s ghost. To be confronted by all her misdoings as Karinna looks at her in hope and then disdain upon seeing all the blood on her hands. From then she is unable to see her as her daughter leaving Keris ultimately alone and to confront all the wrongs she had cause to get to where she is. I felt it more fitting that Mirra killed her. Marcus is the one who took the Bloodshrike’s family away from her so it is only fair that Helene got to kill him. While Keris is the one who tortured Cook and her family. Forced Mirra’s hand to kill her own family just so they won’t have to suffer under Keris anymore. So it felt right to me that Mirra finally got to have the last word. I also loved how Mirra was able to take away all of Keris’s pain until she was reduced to nothing but a girl again before she was tainted. Then ultimately passed on. I found this a incredibly satisfying end to her arc.

Lastly: Mirra. I LOVED that Mirra was able to come back. I LOVED that Sabaa wasn’t cruel enough to leave Laia alone. Since Helene had baby Zacharias. Elias has Quin. Laia would’ve had no one. And I loved that Elias and Helene teared up also happy to see that Laia still had one person left. I loved that cook admits to her faults and how broken she herself is. How vengeance took over her and led her astray. But there is no one she loves more in this world than Laia. That she will fight everything and anyone just to ensure Laia will have a place in this world. I also loved her sense of humor. Had me cackling when she demanded Mauth to come talk to her and when she casually calls Elias her son in law. I loved her teaming up with the Bloodshrike! I love the big reveal leading up to it. It was all just so perfect for me!

In conclusion: Do I have my criticisms? Yes. There are a few things I wish to change. I thought Keenan was mentioned too much in the beginning. I found their relationship especially in book 2 very unhealthy so to hear her mention it and him as something to miss made me quite uncomfortable. Though I suppose it’s also just the thought of missing an ally and a friend cause there was a time where she had no one but Keenan to rely on. I wish we could’ve had more Helene and Laia scenes! Seeing her smile in a long time because Elias and Laia had their happy ending did wonders to my soul! I wish we could’ve had more scenes of Elias, Laia, and Helene all working together. I wish we could’ve had more scenes of Elias and Laia fighting side by side. Especially since I’ve always wanted scenes of them fighting together. The ones we got in SKY were EVERYTHING! I just wish we could’ve had more of that instead of them walking in the forest and pages of him being cold to her. I wish Avitas and Elias could’ve bonded more. To see them two be so reserved and yet so happy to be able to meet was such a gift. And yet they only fully spoke in two scenes ): I wish Darin and Laia got to spend more time together. I wish Laia could’ve gotten more scenes with her scythe. Or that we could’ve gotten more scenes of Laia with her bow and arrows. However these are minor things and do not take away much from my overall feeling for this book. 

Which is I am in love with this book. It is my new favorite book of all time. Of any other book ever. I think it is the best book in the series and the fact that Sabaa is so proud of it and says it’s the best book she ever wrote. I can’t help but agree and give A Sky Beyond The Storms a sky full of stars. The ending is everything I’ve ever wanted and so much more. It makes saying goodbye hurt less knowing my faves are alive, happy, and have finally found a place to call home. I love that we end off on Elias and Laia getting engaged and walking off to get ready to start a new life together. I couldn’t of asked for a better ending. Sabaa really outdid herself and I hope she gets all the praise and all the awards for this divine book and her flawless story telling. Truly one of the best Kehannis out there ❤️

#A Sky Beyond The Storm

[galaxina-the-pyro]

Isabella!! For the character ask

Bless your heart, I love you, thank you.

Favorite Thing About Them: Isabella is such an adorable bean and such a potent badass. Every time I see her in an episode, even for a moment, the enjoyment just increases. I guess you could say that I appreciate that she’s...a girl. She’s not a tomboy, not a girly-girl, not some kinda stereotype even though the show makes you think that at first, she’s just a girl. A girl who likes selling cupcakes, singing songs, being cute, all the stuff girls are stereotypically known for to the point of pink being her iconic color - and then you see her doing stuff like making a manly announcement about a truck rally, taking on Buford, being incredibly competitive and loving extreme sports, earning insane, non-conventional patches, FIGHTING ROBOTS, she’s a flipping beast. And she does it as HERSELF - there’s no one telling Isabella she shouldn’t like pink or should conform to one line of thinking. Heck, her whole shtick is just having a crush on a boy - and even though fans may complain about that, and even if the universe seems against Isabella at times, her friends never show disdain toward her feelings, it’s never implied that Isabella is WRONG for doing or liking things. She’s just...being her. She’s a girl - and a girl can like dolls and they can like bb guns. Heck, Isabella’s the character who made me realize how stupid labels really are, and that I should just focus on being me instead of trying to avoid being a stereotype.

I can also very much relate TO her crush on Phineas - I’ve felt that same fear whenever I had a crush on a boy. Heck, my favorite Isabella centered episode, “Operation Crumb Cake” really nails down all the aspects of Isabella that I ESPECIALLY adore. Isabella’s loyalty to Phineas is just...so wholesome and loving. More on that later.

Least Favorite Thing About Them: Isabella is a feminist icon - probably more-so than even Candace, Vanessa, or any other female in the show. As a result, though it’s not TOO often, she’s usually the mouthpiece for certain propaganda regarding the whole “girls are better than boys” fallacy that seems to be littered in children’s programming, Phineas and Ferb sadly being no exception. On one hand, it can be done relatively well - I liked her interactions with Buford in “Got Game?”, as she never once implied that girls were necessarily better than boys, rather that girls COULD beat boys.

On the other hand, you have Mission Marvel, where Isabella complains that there are NO superheroines in the group, even though she’s never had a problem being the only female in the group in the past. It greatly weakens her character whenever she plays a propaganda mouthpiece - this goes without saying for any character, but a character like Isabella especially.

Favorite Line: “Oh, Phineas, yes! I've been right here in front of you all along just waiting for you to...oh...wait. You were talking about the puppet, weren’t you?” 

(Much like Phineas, Isabella has A LOT of good lines that are underappreciated - “Do we have chopped liver? What do you think this place is? Chopped li-- oh, that doesn’t really work.”, “See what I mean? One woman’s capris pants is another’s...what’d I miss?”, and ya’ll know how much I love her “IT’S EXTREME!” tangents.)

brOTP: Isabella’s got a good list of brOTPs, namely with the Fireside Girls, Candace, Ferb, and of course Phineas - since I’m just gonna be gushing about Phinabella in the next part, I’m just gonna talk about the obvious:

I like how The Fireside Girls are in sync, but they’re also not perfect. They’re a clique of sorts, but not necessarily in a bad way. They still make mistakes, like pick on Ginger, and they seem to follow Isabella a little too easily, but their bond is, regardless, part of what makes them all so likable. I really wish we had more Fireside Girls episodes, because those girls deserved more development, and Isabella ROCKS that uniform.

Isabella and Candace’s relationship isn’t as forward as the others, but I really like their interactions - Isabella’s always willing to give Candace advice even if it wasn’t asked for, and Candace was so earnest in comforting Isabella when Pinky went missing and was even supportive of Isabella’s crush on Phineas even though she personally didn’t get the attraction. These two are gonna be rad sister inlaws.

Then there’s Ferb, which was a very interesting development. Isabella went from simply acknowledging him, to outright trying to push him and the others out of the picture, to appreciating him, and finally to really truly getting to know how he thinks. Ferb is an awesome wingman, and a supportive friend - he’s also a total troll, and I love him all the same.

Edit: Adding this here, I also really love Isabella’s friendship/rivalry with Doofenshmirtz, like, they were kinda hostile at first but then she became like? So supportive? She gave him a patch and everything, and I think that’s like, so important, because not many people believe in Doofenshmirtz and assume the worst, and then here’s Isabella who’s gotten to know him and believes he can accomplish his goal enough to give him a patch revolving around it - it’s so wonderful, and if we ever get more content I want them to interact again because any positive reinforcement for Doof is fantastic.

OTP: Phinabella. That’s a given, let’s all be real here. Isabella’s love for Phineas has always been a personal source of joy for me, and I hope to be as devoted as her when I find that special someone. Phineas and Isabella are just...so very in sync, and have such a great bond with each other. Sure, it’s hilarious whenever Isabella’s shot down, but what REALLY makes this ship is just their interactions. Whenever they dance together, whenever Phineas involves Isabella with a project or asks her what they should do, the puns they shared in “De Plane! De Plane!”, how protective they are of each other, how much they care for their feelings - it��s just so darn sweet.

It actually is all the stronger given how oblivious Phineas is, because that let’s you know that those gestures are ALL the more sincere. Phineas just so very deeply cares for Isabella, and Isabella cares very deeply for Phineas. I wish “Act Your Age” showcased this more instead of tearing them a part for a while, because I have a hard time believing they’d lose touch even if Isabella were to try to move on from Phineas - because their friendship isn’t just BECAUSE of Isabella’s crush, and their chemistry isn’t because of romance itself, it’s from the fact that they’re deeply connected in the most pure ways imaginable. I just...love them so much.

I like shipping Isabella with other characters, mostly OCs and...well...Buford oddly enough, but I can’t really see any of those ships being truly endgame. It’s always Phinabella in my heart, it always has to be.

nOTP: Let’s see, uh...Doofbella, Isabella/Candace, Isabella x any of the Fireside Girls, Isabella x Perry...I’d put Ferbella here, but I’m actually okay with that ship. I don’t CARE for it, but I don’t outright despise it either.

Random Headcanon: Based on the events of “La Candace-Cabra”, pulling Isabella’s dress inside out reveals that it doubles as a goat costume; she claims that all the dresses of this particular style and brand do this, and that she only has this dress because “there was a sale at the Googleplex mall”. She ultimately despises the fact her dresses have this feature, but appreciates how soft the goat-costume fur makes the outfit.

Unpopular Opinion: I kinda sorta wish that there was an episode where Buford won against Isabella? Or maybe, just put Isabella in a position where she didn’t necessarily SUCCEED against an opponent. I’d find that kinda conflict interesting.

Song I Associate With Them: “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri

Favorite Picture of Them:

To be fair there’s like...too many pictures to count, but if I had to choose, it’d be this one...oh, and uh, this one too (I know it’s a gif, but c’mon, this is amazing):

Wow...I talked about Isabella A LOT. Maybe she really IS my favorite...

...nope. Still a three-way draw.

#Phineas and Ferb #isabella garcia-shapiro #phinbella #phinabella #pnf #ask game #character ask #i really like isabella a lot #she just makes me super happy #lol

[sometimesrosy]

Antis are all the time saying bellarke is platonic, but then they use every bellarke trope, sentence, scene and canon on screen (canon)-off screen( JR words) to make it about their ship, like hello are you alright, you know, it make no sense is stupid.

I believe what’s happening is called “cognitive dissonance.”

In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance occurs when a person holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, or participates in an action that goes against one of these three, and experiences psychological stress because of that. Wikipedia

Their belief is that bellarke is platonic and their ship is endgame/more important, but the canon is showing bellarke in a romantic relationship, with multiple exceedingly romantic situations and tropes and allusions.

This causes a tension, discomfort, shame, even anger, right? So as they attempt to solve the discomfort, they... look for evidence to support their ships and weaken bellarke. They blatantly ignore canon or shift certain storylines/scenes to be about their ship. 

They are having a hard time reconciling their belief that bellarke is platonic and their otp is endgame, with the canon story, so the way they solve it is to BELIEVE that everything on screen that is romantic bellarke is... not there. I guess. But then if they use it for their ship, then perhaps they’re just ignoring canon and saying canon isn’t as important as their interpretations.

Which is a philosophy I have seen in fandom more than once. People will get very passionate about how they are better that canon, the canon creators, the creators are wrong, about how fandom is more important than story or the storytellers and that they DESERVE to have their OTP be endgame for various reasons... usually along the lines of social justice, what they’ve suffered, perhaps how toxic they think bellarke is, or how heteronormative (boring, trite, lack of rep etc.) Or rewriting the story so that Clarke is the villain and spacekru is the hero so therefore she can’t be bellamy’s endgame. Or creating a story that was never on screen to support the canon statement of b/e relationship which wasn’t given any on screen development.

They can’t deal with the dissonance of their belief in their OTP being disproved in canon. It seems like... they are discovering that they are wrong in thinking their OTP is “meant to be,” so they pick pocket the canon story of all the romance and put it into their fanon, to make their fanon still a part of the canon?

Does it matter to them that what they are using for their OTP fanon is Bellarke canon? NO. Because Clarke said she loved Lxa so they will have an endgame in the anomaly. And Because B/E have been a canon relationship for mumblewhoknowshowmany months/years and it’s not a love triangle because Bellarke is PLATONICdamnyou, so obvi they are meant to be. They fucked so they’re endgame.

No. Let me take that back. It DOES matter. That’s where the cognitive dissonance comes in, when their beliefs: that there is canon romance with bellarke, conflict with their actions: shipping their OTP who is looking less important than Bellarke.

The conflict is causing discomfort. And that’s why they work to change their belief-- SEEING canon romantic bellarke. Much easier to change their belief in what a romantic story looks like on screen, the interpretation of a show, or even the very existence of narrative intentionality. They say everything that doesn’t fit is beliza being in love, or JR being a bad actor, or bait. They look for the tiniest bit of evidence that their ship is endgame. SEE! they mentioned Lxa that means true love, and it’s scifi they can do anything they want that means Lxa will come back. SEE! they hugged on the battlefield that means he cares more for her than clarke it’s the best supportive long term marriage endgame. 

When they came up with a cognitive dissonance between Seeing Canon Romantic Bellarke and Shipping CL/BE As True Love Endgame-- instead of changing their behavior (accepting the story is about BC, letting go of The 100 and sticking to fanon/fanfiction, multishipping their OTP and BC, dropping their OTP, continuing to ship their OTP even though BC is canon) they choose instead to JUSTIFY their actions (Clarke is the villain, CLs DESERVE endgame because they were hurt, BC is fanservice. JR hates Bellarke and is baiting Bellarkers, What happens off screen with B/E is more important than onscreen Bellarke, only kiss/confess/sex counts as canon romance, Bellarke is PLATONIC, the narrative doesn’t matter only canon statements of dating, the cineamatography doesn’t matter only script, the next scene doesn’t matter only this one statement of bellamy’s even though bellamy will be proved wrong in the next scene, etc.,) by changing the meaning of canon as if their opinion of canon changes the actual canon.

There is actually a school of interpretation that thinks the social environment of a work of art is more important than the work of art itself. And that may even be true, when we are analyzing society, culture, history, etc. But IMO if you don’t understand what is happening in the world of the story, the CANON, then you can’t understand it’s impact on society or society’s impact on canon. So therefore, understanding the canon story must come first. 

BUT because this interpretation exists, it allows many people, even educated, intelligent people, to decide that what happens with fandom, cast/crew, politics etc (the CL catastrophe and LGBT rights and the lesbian death trope outrage, the concept that JR hates Bellarkers and is out to get them, various actors saying they love E and B/E, the behavior of fans like harassment, cheating, winning polls, getting the show trending etc.,) will tell us what will happen in the story. These shipwars become the deciding factor in whether Bellarke is romantic and endgame, or whether L will come back and ride off into the sunset or B/E will end up together. 

This isn’t about literary interpretation. This is about social psychology. However if you learn how to analyze fiction, those are transferrable skills you can use in analyzing people and culture. 

[shitty-fate-merch-daily]

in honor of her tidal waves of terrible merch, jeanne alter for the askmeme?

Jeanne d’Arc [Alter] (Fate/Grand Order)

favorite thing about them

I love Jalter. I love that despite her introduction in Orleans as an intimidating and completely evil enemy, when you get to know her in subsequent events and story chapters you discover that she’s just a big fucking loser. Winner of Chaldea’s biggest buffoon 3 years in a row. When she tried to become Santa by stealing the sack from Santa Alter it cemented her in my favorite character realm. 

least favorite thing about them

This is my gripe with a lot of female fgo characters where the writers don’t take them to their full potential in order to maximize their “waifu” status. Let Jalter cry, let her rage, show us the completely broken shadow of a heroic spirit filled with loathing for both herself and the world that created her. Let her lash out against the protagonist rather offhandedly telling them “don’t tell me what to do” but still being beholden to everything they say anyway. Let her hate, yet pity, Jeanne for the righteous anger she won’t allow herself to accept. And in the fire burning in Jalter’s eyes, let Jeanne see the emotions she truly felt at the very end; that she tries so hard to bury. 

OTP

Jalter x Salter

nOTP

Gilles x Jalter

random headcanon

Jalter has still not given up on becoming santa ruining christmas and has spent her afternoons plotting increasingly intricate ways to steal santa alter’s sack. All of which play out like a looney toons short. 

Santa Alter eats at the same spot in the cafeteria every day. It is an optimal spot, just close enough to the kitchen to catch someone’s attention but too far away to be yelled at by an angry emiya for being a nuisance. After several weeks of detailed surveillance Jalter had determined Santa Alter’s eating patterns. How long it took her to finish a cheeseburger. Her reflex time when someone called out to her while she was eating. How on her 4th helping, approximately 34% of the time she would leave her sack behind for the 20 seconds that it took to get more food. Jalter had it all planned out. After stealing the plans to the chaldea air vents she calculated and placed herself in the area of the ceiling right above where santa alter would be. Using her sword and magic, jalter managed to weaken the area of the ceiling just enough that a certain amount of pressure would make it fall to the floor and allow her access to the room below. 

She waited until lunch time and she could hear the voices of chatting servants. Just when Santa Alter was getting up for her 3rd helping, it happened. The stove, and all the food cooking on it went up in flames. You see, the night before Jalter had sabotaged the stove oh so slightly that after 311 minutes of operation the leak on the gas valve would open and subsequently create massive amounts of flame. 

Santa Alter was distraught by all her potential food burning and rushed over to try and quell the flames and salvage whatever she could. In that instant Jalter sent the ceiling panel plummeting to the floor and leaped towards the sack. Just as her fingertips were about to graze it, something incredibly fast banged into her and sent her careening towards the wall. 

It was Lobo, who grabbed the sack in his mouth and booked it straight out of the cafeteria. You see, Santa Alter had been collecting presents for all the servants and staff in Chaldea, one of which included: a massive amount of doggie treats. the good kind. It seems that even the great king of Currumpaw couldn’t resist treat-treats. 

In reaction, Santa Alter runs into the hall followed by an excessive amount of Excalibur Morgans and what sounded to be part of a wall collapsing. Laying against the wall, her master plan foiled by the innate desires of a dog, Jalter wondered why she even bothered. 

unpopular opinion

Jalter is good but not for the reason that a large portion of her fans like her. If you like her, but refuse to recognize that her main personality trait is “loser” you are weak. 

favorite picture of them

#writing is not my strong suit so sorry if its bad #ask #not merch #shitty-fate-replies #misterbadguy159

[saturnofthemoon]

So, I don’t know why Xkit won’t let me reply anymore, but it’s annoying.

Top 5 Favorite Characters: Katarina Jones, Jennifer Goines, James Cole, Jose Ramse, and Marcus Whitley.

Other characters you like: Cassie, Hannah, Dr. Lasky, Dr. Adler, Olivia, Elliot, Deacon, David Eckland. 

OTPs: I’m not sure if any of my ships qualify as a otp, but they are Katarina/Whitley, Katarina/Elliot, Katarina/David Eckland, Katarina/Olivia, Cassie/Cole, Jennifer/Deacon, Ramse/Elena, and Hannah/Matthew Cole.

Notps: Let’s just say I’m not the biggest fan of Athan/Eliza. The whole cliche of a “fridged woman” has been done to death, thank you. 

Favorite Friendships: Jones and Cole, Cole and Ramse, Jennifer and herself, Jones and Whitley, Cole and Jennifer, Jennifer and Athan.

Favorite Family: The Jones-Cole family.! It’s funny how everyone turned out to be related to Cole in someway or another.

Favorite Episodes: Yesterday/Tomorrow, Lullaby, Year of the Monkey, Primary, Causality, Ouroboros, and Legacy.

Favorite season: Season two!

Favorite Quotes:

“Is a little bit of happiness better than a lifetime of anything but?”

“Death can be erased. Love cannot.”

“We honor time with patience.”

“Nothing stays in a box forever.”

“My god of late has been time.”

Best Musical Moment: Jennifer singing a Pink song in “Die Glocke.”

Moment that made you fangirl the hardest: The Olivia reveal at the end of s3.

When it really disappointed you: S4. I mean it’s not bad, but it is the weakest season, IMO.

Saddest Moment: I’m going to say Elliot’s death. “At least I got to see the best thing I ever made.” *sobs*

Most Well Done Character Death: Hannah. I mean they put an amazing amount of foreshadowing and planning into that one moment. 

Favorite Guest Star: Michael Hogan

Favorite Cast Member: Kirk Acevedo, a fellow Puerto Rican I know from Fringe.

Character you wish was still alive: I think it sucks that Emma won’t exist in the new timeline. I also felt bad that the Pallid Man lost both his parents to time travelers and wanted him to have a better life.

One thing you hope really happens: That the show gets put on Netflix so more people will watch it.

Most shocking twist: The reveal that Hannah is Cole’s mom.

When did you start watching/reading? A couple months ago.

Best animal/creature: Terry the tortoise.

Favorite Location: The facility in the future.

Trope you wish they would stop using? Fridging. It happened to both Elena and Eliza. They kind of reversed it with Eckland, but still.

One thing this show does better than others: Fresh, original stories. 

Funniest moments:

Jones - What would you do if you were me?

Olivia: Quit smoking  

Couple you would like to see: Jones/Whitley, something only I ship, tbh. Jennifer/Deacon. I really thought they were leading up to something. :(

Actor/Actress you want to join the cast: It’s a little late for that.

Favorite Outfit: Jones’ dress in “Masks.”

Favorite Item: Cassie’s watch.

Do you own anything related to the show: Just the blurays.

What house/team/group/friendship group/family/race would you be in? I would be one of the plague victims, thank you very much.

Most boring plotline: Olivia’s ascension in s4. Nothing was ever going to compare to her s3 stuff, but her s4 story was kind of cheesy and two-dimensional.

Most laughably bad moment: Primaries are so rare that paradoxing one significantly weakens the time stream. Yet there are so many in 14th century England that they were considered a persecuted minority? And built a weapon?

Best flashback/flashforward: I really enjoyed seeing Foster’s coup in Yesterday.

Most layered character: Jones, omg is she complex!

Most one dimensional character: The mean lady guardian that Cassie killed.

Scariest moment: When Jones and Olivia locked Jennifer up. My poor baby!

Grossest moment: The guy that got turned inside out due to one of Jones’ experiments. He appeared in “Meltdown.”

Best Looking Male: James Cole

Best looking female: Cassie Railly

Who you're crushing on: Jones, OMG I'm so in love!

Favorite cast moment: When Hannah went to say goodbye to her mother at the end of s2 and the actress went sliding. That was funny.

Favorite Transportation: I’m gonna say Titan.

Most beautiful scene: Jennifer and Jones’ vision in “Bodies of Water.” It was gorgeous.

Unanswered question/continuity issue/plot error that bugs you: What happened to David Eckland in the new timeline?

Best promo: NA, I watched the entire thing streaming after the show had finished.

At what point did you fall in love with this show? “Yesterday” 

Thank you so much @queenofarmand​!

#12 Monkeys #12 monkeys spoilers

[gay-jesus-probably]

It’s a stupid pet peeve, but y’know what fanfic trope I can’t fucking stand? Arranged marriage AU’s. Not because of the concept of arranged marriages, but because the people who write those fics have no idea how arranged marriages work. Note that I’m talking specifically about royalty AU’s here, couldn’t care less about other settings. Like, I get the appeal of it, royalty is cool, arranged marriages are a convenient way to get your OTP together while ensuring there’s conflict, but oh my god I’m begging you people to research how arranged marriages actually worked because I have yet to see a fic of it that isn’t an inaccurate clusterfuck. And that’s annoying because it could be so much more interesting, but no you’d rather rehash every creepy romance novel cliche ever.

Like. For a start. For some reason, the most common setup of arranged marriage AU’s is ‘X country is bitter enemies with Y country, and to end the horrible war Prince X must marry Prince Y’. Why does that keep getting used? I mean yeah you want to do the whole enemies to lovers thing and aren’t creative enough to come up with a real reason for your ship to dislike each other at first, but that’s not how arranged marriages work. Securing peace treaties is literally the only situation where arranged marriages would make the political situation worse. Bear with me here. Let’s say you’re the leader of a country, and you’re at war with another country. It’s pretty much a draw; even if you win, your army will be severely weakened. You’re ready to call it a day, and the opposing leader is as well. You sit down to negotiate a peace treaty, both of you knowing damn well that you still hate each other, and once you’ve regrouped, you’ll probably just go to war again. And then the other leader suggests marrying one of their children to your heir. No fucking way would you agree to that; they’re obviously going to be an informant for their parent, or assassinate your heir, or usurp your throne. Or vice versa; they want one of your children to marry their heir. That’s a thinly veiled hostage situation! You’d have to be crazy to agree to that! Arranged marriages never happen when hostilities end in a draw. They’re only used to end extremely decisive wars. And even then, actual straight up marriage is a very unconventional method, and also a stupid choice. Indefinitely hosting a rival monarch’s child isn’t a peace gesture, it’s a hostage situation. Prince X is in Country Y so that King X has to do exactly what King Y says, and marriage is a very unneeded step. You’re not fooling anyone, literally every person with an ounce of sense can tell that Prince X is your hostage, just call him your ward or something. Marrying Prince X to Prince Y is a bad idea, because that gives Prince X political power in your court, which is the last thing you want a hostage to have. So stop using enemy countries as a premise for your arranged marriage AU, everyone involved has to be dumber than a sack of rocks for it to work, and that kills the tension real quick.

Now that we’ve crushed that whole fantasy, there’s the overall concept of arranged marriages between royals, because seriously I feel like all of you are horribly misunderstanding the concept of monarchies. Royalty does not mean filthy rich person living in a castle with really nice clothes. Royalty means un-elected politician. Unless you want to abdicate and take your chances, being born into the royal family of an active monarchy means that you’re going to be in politics your whole life. And obviously everyone’s heard of royals fucking around and doing nothing with their lives, but that leads to countries literally falling apart very quickly. If the country is stable, the royal family’s working their collective asses off.

So let’s say Country A and Country B are forming a serious alliance, and sealing the deal by sending Prince A off to marry Prince B. Prince A has spent his entire life learning about politics, and his duty to his country. He’s probably seen his older siblings married off to other countries, or has in-laws that were royals from another country. The alliance has been in the works for quite some time, and he’s heard a fair amount about it, or even been directly involved in it. None of this is a surprise; there’s been months of negotiations leading up to it. And now that it’s confirmed, he’s not going anywhere for quite some time. After all, there’s still a lot of details to be hashed out, and Prince A needs to know everything about the language, history, politics, and etiquette of Country B before he gets there, or the best case scenario is him being publicly humiliated; worst case scenario is an international incident, and the marriage being called off. He might not be happy about the arranged marriage, and he’s definitely nervous, but he’s not being dragged kicking and screaming. Prince A and Prince B are virtual strangers, but they’re going to be ruling a country together someday. You want to at least be friends with your co-ruler. Love isn’t even necessary; they’ll need an heir to secure the throne, but other than that, who cares? There’s a reason married royals usually lived in different parts of the castle. Purely platonic affection between a king and queen was about as common as actual romance; the marriage was always a political arrangement, and producing an heir is just business.

You gotta be careful when working with bourgeoisie protagonists, because if their highest priority isn’t helping their people, then they’re going to come across as unsympathetic assholes. Sure, you could just write them as having good intentions but being genuinely oblivious to how much their people struggle. But that description is a good summary of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s reign, and I think we all remember how well that went.

Listen, I love romantic tension as much as the next guy. ...That’s a blatant lie, I’m actually a salty aromantic bitch, but the point is, I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do. If you wanna use a premise that falls apart if you think about it for a minute, then all power to you. If you want your royal characters to do nothing except look pretty and be generically important, then go for it. Write what you want to write. But if you’re aiming for worldbuilding that makes sense, and don’t want your royalty AU to be generic as hell, then seriously. Think about approaching things from a more realistic angle. If nothing else, the end result will definitely stand out from the other fics.

And yes I am aware that throwing out relationship drama in favour of political drama is a very aro thing to do, and I’m comfortable with being a stereotype. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#me and my impromptu essays jfc #less romantic bullshit more political drama #thats what i want to see in my media

[thjslove]

gotham rewatch · 3.05 Do you really believe [she would be proud]? Oswald, look at everything you’ve achieved. The people love you. Gangs fear you.

#dcedit #dctvedit #gothamedit #nygmobblepotedit #nygmobblepot #gotham #oswald cobblepot #edward nygma #otp: you were the one time i let love weaken me #penguin x riddler #mine #* #3x05 #this is the first gotham rewatch gifset i post in vibrant colors in my tag... rip #also i've been meaning to gif this for like 2 months and i accidentally did it on mother's day... well #also ALSO i'll keep saying it but oswald's season 3 makeup is MY FAVE

[missluthorwillseeyounow]

Pure (Red Daughter x Morgana AU) 

Lena brings books -- mountains upon mountains of books -- to the DEO, and Red Daughter pleads for Morgana to read them to her, because her voice is beautiful – rich, like wind through the fir trees back in Kaznia, she says.

Sometimes Red Daughter speaks to her of Lex, and all he was to her, and her voice becomes small and broken when she remembers that all of it was a lie

The Kryptonian hates the name Red Daughter now, she winces every time she hears it, as if it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. So Morgana calls her by a different name.

Katya, the name suits her, Morgana thinks, and the Kryptonian smiles widely – her smile a brilliant living thing on her face – when Morgana tells her the meaning of the name. Pure.

AU in which Morgana is Lena’s “dead” twin, who was turned radioactive with Kryptonite by one of Lex’s experiments. 

Look, these babies both deserve a happy ending, okay, and I need Red Daughter to live

So, I’m still a little pissed about how they “resolved” the Red Daughter storyline, so of fucking course, I made an AU, and I gave her her own OTP, cos baby girl deserves it.

This AU has 3 different versions. And in each one of them, I gave Lena a twin (before you dismiss it, hear me out):

In this version, I made her twin Morgana.  Yes, Morgana is the other half of this OTP in this AU, cos she also deserves a good ending.

I deliberately didn’t change her name to an “L” name for this one. (I actually named Lena “Magdalena” in this to match Morgana but that’s unimportant, except for the fact that Alex teases her mercilessly about it when she finds out).

So, Lena and Morgana are twins, but Morgana “dies” when they’re around 16 or so.

Morgana is “the forgotten Luthor” (I hc an article Kara found on her with this title when she was researching the Luthor family history when she first became friends with Lena). There’s very little information to be found on her.

Lena and Morgana were close growing up, sharing secrets and ideas, keeping each other safe in the treacherous waters of Luthor family life.

Morgana was the more outgoing one, charming, the one who easily adapted to their luxurious lifestyle in elite social circles.

Lena was more quiet, the one who got her knuckles rapped for reaching a little too eagerly at the table, who always got the disdainful look from Lillian (“Straighten up, Lena! Luthors don’t slouch!”)

In bed at night, Lena cries into Morgana’s shoulder, and Morgana tucks a stray hair behind her ear. “It’s a show, Lena. It’s all a show, like the ones we used to put on for Mum, remember? We just have to give them a good show.”

Growing up, Lex tries the same psychological tactics with Morgana as he did with Lena. Y’know, belittling her inventions and all that.

EXCEPT for this one invention she made when she was 16 that he realized would be helpful in eradicating Superman.

See at around this time, Lex has already starting to get obsessed with ridding the world of the “Kryptonian menace”. He had just started making his synthetic Kryptonite, but it was too unstable to use.

When he finds out about Morgana’s breakthrough he immediately starts trying to manipulate her into giving it to him

Her invention is Inception. Yeah, going-into-a-person’s-subconscious-and-manipulating-their-perception-of-reality Inception

Lex figures that he can use Inception to bring down Superman, because as Morgana later tells Kara and Red Daughter “Even Kryptonians dream.”

Morgana, who is about 16 at the time, realizes Lex’s plan and realizes how determined he is to get a hold of Inception (in one other version of this that includes Gwen, Arthur and Merlin, it involves isolating Morgana from her friends and killing off Arthur, but that’s a long and complicated story no one wants to hear)

Morgana attempts to foil Lex’s plan by destroying all of her research on Inception, as well as the machine she used for it.

Inception only exists in Morgana’s mind now, and since no amount of manipulation will make Morgana yield to Lex’s plan, he eventually kidnaps her and keeps her captive in one of his labs.

Basically Lex tries experimenting on her and torturing her so she’ll give him Inception.

One of his experiments involved injecting her with some of his concentrated Kryptonite stock. Like the pure stuff, actual Kryptonite from Krypton. He did it to see how the human body would process it and if it could be synthesized, since he failed in synthesizing his own Kryptonite

The end result is that Morgana literally becomes radioactive. Like how radiation chemo makes people radioactive but WORSE. She literally can’t touch anyone. Because in this AU Kryptonite is harmful to humans too.

Which is why when Morgana eventually escapes Lex’s lab she doesn’t go back to the person she cares about most, Lena.

Lena doesn’t know about any of this. All she knows is that her sister died in a failed experiment. The family has a quiet funeral, Lena is the only one who cries and stays at the graveside.

Lillian scolds her in contempt “Luthors do not cry, Lena.”, and tries to get her in the car. But for the first time, Lena is immovable. She doesn’t wipe her tears or compose herself like a lady. She just kneels in the dirt and shakes with quiet sobs. Lillian finally leaves her there

Fast forward years later, to when Lex eventually goes to prison and Lena takes over L-Corp.

During this time, Morgana has been living almost completely isolated all these years, because of her radioactivity.

She does have one ally. I don’t remember if Daxamites are immune to Kryptonite (tbh I didn’t really pay attention to that part of the show), but let’s say they are.

Morgana uses a Daxamite, Mor-Dred to conduct most of her business with the outside world (yes, that Mordred). Her house has been safeguarded for her radioactivity, and most of her business is conducted within it. On the rare occasions when she does have to go out, she wears special lead-lined clothing.

Fast forward to Red Daughter running amok disguised as Supergirl under Lex’s orders. I’m just gonna disregard the ending they did for Red Daughter, cos it pisses me off.

Morgans reveals to Lena and the rest of the DEO that she’s alive, and volunteers to stop Red Daughter since she is pretty much Kryptonite on two legs.

The Kryptonite weakens Red Daughter, and they manage to capture her. But since Lex brainwashed her, she’s still under his influence, so Morgana uses Inception to find out exactly what Lex told her so she can undo his work, she uses Inception to implant the doubt in Red Daughter’s mind.

Kara decides to help reprogram Red Daughter from her brainwashing, and convinces the DEO to let her stay in the facility.

Morgana is another problem, however. Since she is literally the Supers’ weakness and toxic to everyone else, the DEO refuses to let her run around free. They keep her in a lead-lined cell, “for everyone’s safety ”

Lena, Alex and Supergirl try to protest but to no avail. Morgana is kept in the cell across from Red Daughter.

At first, she only talks to the Kryptonian because she’s trying to see the effects of the idea she implanted in her during Inception. If the doubt she’d sown was enough to undo Lex’s brainwashing.

It’s there, she finds, and Red Daughter is susceptible to deprogramming.

So Morgana decides to stay for a while (cos let’s face it, Morgana being Morgana AND a Luthor in this AU the only reason she stayed in that cell was because she chose to; if Lex couldn’t keep her contained, what chance did the DEO have?)

Morgana tells herself it’s because it’s nice to have company again after years of self-imposed isolation, necessary though it might be. It’s also nice to be able to see her sister every day again, even if it’s through lead infused glass

But she’s beginning to enjoy the other Kryptonian’s presence. She’s a clever one, this Red Daughter. So curious and eager to learn, so very lovely in her earnestness. She listens so intently to Morgana’s stories of the world she doesn’t know, not knowing that Morgana herself hasn’t known the world in many years.

Lena brings books, mountains and mountains of books, and Red Daughter pleads for Morgana to read them to her, because her voice is beautiful – rich, like wind through the fir trees, she says.

Sometimes Red Daughter speaks to her of Lex, and all he was to her, and her voice becomes small and broken when she remembers that all of it was a lie.

The Kryptonian hates the name Red Daughter now, she winces every time she hears it, as if it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. So Morgana calls her by a different name.

Katya, the name suits her, Morgana thinks, and the Kryptonian smiles widely – her smile a brilliant living thing on her face – when Morgana tells her the meaning of the name. Pure.

(I literally can’t with the name “Linda”. I cannot write smut with “Linda”. So she’s Katya now)

But eventually, Morgana knows it’s time to go. Captivity is acid to her soul. She’s lived through it once, and she won’t go through it again. A life of hiding and isolation may be lonely and dangerous, but it’s her own.

As she leaves, she turns to Katya, the closest she’s made to a friend in all these years – even closer than Mor-Dred – and takes pity on her, the beautiful broken Snowbird, betrayed by a Luthor and stashed away like a toy the world would rather forget about.

Morgana frees her. And there’s a moment, just before the cell doors open, when Katya – lovely Katya with her pure, earnest eyes – asks Morgana to take her with her.

Morgana meets those eyes, and a voice inside her whispers “Maybe…. maybe…”

But then the doors open, and the moment glass parts and Morgana steps closer, glowing green veins begin to creep over Katya’s face, and she begins to wince involuntarily at the pain.

And Morgana shakes her head at her own folly, her own wishful thinking.

She presses a kiss to Katya’s cheek, and Katya hisses in pain despite herself.

Morgana draws back regretfully. She smiles wryly and pulls away “it’s been a pleasure, zvyozdochka.” (Little star)

Morgana goes underground, since she’s effectively a fugitive again (She has some safehouses prepared in case something like this happens, but they’re not as radiation-proof as her home).

Kara finds out Katya escaped, and takes her in to hide her from the DEO. But eventually, Katya runs away. To find Morgana.

(I have a vague scene in my head where Katya, poor Katya who has no social filter and doesn’t know to conceal or label her feelings, confesses them to Morgana)

“I was so lonely without you. Kara tried, she helped, and Lena visited me everyday  - but they’re not you. When I’m around you, yes, I’m in pain, but that is nothing to the pain I felt without you. It hurt. It hurt so much, Morgana. Why does it hurt so?”

Morgana tries hard to keep herself cold, to harden herself against Katya’s sincerity.

“Didn’t you learn your lesson from Lex? We Luthors are not made to love. He poisoned your mind, and I am built to poison your body. The love of a Luthor is a wicked thing. You should know this by now, Katya. We bring more harm than joy to the ones we love.”

Katya shakes her head vehemently, tears running down her face. “I don’t care. I don’t care! If you feel the same way, – if being with me makes you feel as warm and light as being with you makes me feel, if you hurt as much as I do when we’re not together – I don’t care about anything else.”

Katya takes Morgana’s face in her hands and presses their foreheads together. Immediately, green starts to snake over her face, seeping into her eyes. She doesn’t have her strength because of the Kryptonite, and it’s almost easy for Morgana to wrench her hands away.

“You may not care about yourself getting hurt, but I do. I won’t be the reason for your pain.” And she walks out and puts as much distance between them as she can in the safehouse.

Also, I hc that Morgana likes to keep her hair long and curly (which is how people used to tell her apart from Lena because Lena has straight hair). And despite her radioactivity and the traces of Kryptonite in her hair, her long tresses are Morgana’s one point of vanity that she refused to chop off after being tainted by Kryptonite. Her one indulgence in a life of restraint and control.

Katya sees it long and loose once while they’re at the safehouse.

She can tell Morgana is inside the room, the telltale Kryptonite churning of her stomach alerting her to the other woman’s proximity. Even muted by the lead lined walls, it’s still enough for her organs to want to expel their contents. But the sick sensation is almost welcome after the hollow emptiness she’d felt without the other woman.

Katya moves closer to the room when she sees the door is open a crack, fighting the nausea and the beginnings of acid in her blood.

Morgana is standing at the foot of her bed, clearly still getting ready for the day. Her high-necked blouse and her signature black gloves are still on the bed.

She’s clad in nothing but her skirt and bra, but Katya can’t even see the rest of her body because it’s covered by the living black mass that is Morgana’s hair

She’s only ever seen Morgana’s hair up, always meticulously arranged in an elegant but severe updo that doesn’t hint at the wild beautiful tresses on display right now. It makes her want to see it all the time in its untamed, uncurated state, flowing unchecked down Morgana’s shoulders and back.

It makes her want to bury her hands in the black mass - as surprising and mysterious as the woman herself. She wants to feel the texture of each curl and strand, to discover the secrets buried in the rich darkness.

It’s only the tendrils of sick glowing green that snake up from her fingers up her arm that stop her reaching out her hand to open the door and just touch.

Instead she watches Morgana slowly gather her hair and painstakingly curate each curl. She’s just as lovely with her hair up, but it paints a sadness in the center of Katya’s chest, like an ink blot spreading, that it’s even necessary, that she’s forced to hide this part of herself.

Of course, since I need a happy ending, Morgana eventually gets cured.

In one version of the AU, they discover Lex knows a way to extract the Kryptonite from her system, and Morgana uses Inception to find out how to do it. While inside his mind, she also implants an idea in him. Three days later, they find him dead with a gun in his mouth and a bullet in his brain.

When Morgana gets cured, Katya is right there beside her. She’s the first person Morgana touches (in like 10 fucking years).

It starts as a soft, tentative touch at first – gloves are removed and trembling fingertips touch Katya’s palm – but Katya being essentially Kara is super tactile and it ends up being the tightest embrace Morgana can remember. She ends up breaking down and crying.

Also, in this AU, Lena finds out that Kara is Supergirl through Inception. When Morgana first enters Katya’s subconscious, she takes Lena with her (kinda like how Kara took Lena and Alex to Juru), and it’s revealed that Katya knew about Kara’s identity.

Like in the show, Lena doesn’t reveal to Kara that she knows. Instead, she slowly separates herself from Kara and begins isolating herself, ashamed of how she’s let herself be fooled, of how much she’d revealed, how much sentiment she’d let herself indulge in.

Morgana doesn’t let her. “You think you know what it’s like to be truly alone, Lena? You have no idea. For years, I lived with no other company but my own shadow. No human contact. I haven’t touched another person in ten years because my very skin is poison. I’ve lived in the shadows, in unease, afraid of killing someone, or Lex killing me. You may think you’ve got no one, but look around you -- you have a family, Lena! The one thing we never thought we’d truly have again outside of each other. And it’s a family that loves you, that cares for you. Yes, she lied! The woman you love -- don’t even bother denying it -- lied to you, for years! Perhaps she did it for a good reason, perhaps her reasons aren’t good enough. You’re allowed to be angry about that -- rage, cry, scream all you want! But don’t isolate yourself. You still have a choice, I don’t. I know what it’s like not to have the luxury of that choice. Don’t choose to be alone.”

Eventually, Lena forgives Kara (but that’s a story for another time).

_____________

By SorrowsFlower

I just really needed a nice happy ending for my baby Red Daughter, also my baby Morgana. So here it is. Sort of. What am I gonna do for the rest of the hiatus???

#supercorp #morgana pendragon #red daughter #katie mcgrath #melissa benoist #supergirl #merlin #lena luthor #lex luthor #kara danvers #russian kara #kaznian kara #commiecorp #supercorp au #merlin au

[cococassey]

Kdrama: Memories of the Alhambra

Rating: 9/10

Review (finale):

Guys guys why the outrage? Don't you think we all owe it to Hyun Bin to let him rest and take it easy on the last episode of the drama? Poor guy, alternative title of this drama should be 'The Hundred Ways to Torture Hyun Bin'. He seriously got thinner with each episode after that unforgettable badass performance as Jin Woo.

About that finale, I'm not as mad as people are over that sort of 'hopeful' open ending. Honestly a lot of drama writers are in love with that. I thought before, ok if she just explained 'the bug' why playing the game can get you killed in real life, then it's all good. We kind of passed that hurdle. But she last minute added this 'instance dungeon', the idea has its merits, but it was explained and executed poorly as there was not enough time.

So as the writer wants me to fill in the blanks on my own, I'm assuming that instance dungeon is a safe zone (Seju created) like 'Cafe Alcazaba' where you can survive free from attackers, but you're stuck in the game and frozen in time (Hello wreck it Ralph?). Maybe Jin Woo survived (as he is a living person) but was weakened after Emma deleted the bug off him, panicked and stumbled upon it, and got stuck there, escaping the reset? In my own happy ending Hee Ju will level up to be the new master to save Jin Woo, with allies genius brother Seju and funny techie Yang Ju, they'll get Jin Woo out in no time. And Hee Ju will keep him far far away from playing games for the rest of their lives lol.

But boy do I need more peace and closure for Jin Woo after all he went through. Please something more. For him and Hee Ju. Though that ending takes away nothing from the fact that there's simply nothing like Alhambra in dramaland yet, and I hope it starts a genre trend. It's mainly a scifi thriller with a futuristic theme, but at its heart it's still about very human things like love, family, and friendship kdramas excel at. There's a tragic tone throughout, but there's lightness and hope amidst it all.

The tale is how the camaraderie of four men with seemingly strong ties, was broken through jealousy, greediness, and pride. How both horrifyingly tragic and fitting is it that it's the son who put an end to his father's evil ways because of the professor's own plans? On the other side of the coin, when Jin Woo was at his lowest, there were also friendships that lasted over and beyond life itself. Director Park has to have the most thankless job ever (no wonder he's resigning) and an underrated role, love how his character hit that perfect blend of 'he thinks Jin Woo is crazy bonkers but he's still concerned as a friend'. Of course I may never recover from the tragic fate of ever loyal Secretary Jeong Hun who can seriously give Hee Ju a run for her money as true OTP of Jin Woo.

Speaking of the romance, I'm such a sucker for that 'Florence Nightingale' angle. When zombie Hyeong Seok started haunting him, Jin Woo was broken physically and his sanity hanging on a thread, he desperately latched on to Hee Ju as his light. Hee Ju, from feelings that started from gratitude and being in his debt, took care of him and never gave up on him until the end. I'm infatuated myself with him after this, how can I question Hee Ju's feelings lol.

Hee Ju's character was sorely underused. Even though she's emotional, she's so capable, nurturing, and the backbone not only of her family, but Jin Woo as well. He wouldn't have survived this long without her strength. Another big minus for me is the lack of more good female characters in the drama. The writer can only redeem herself if she writes about the adventures of awesome sister Min Ju sometime in the future.

Finally, Hyun Bin. The heart and soul of this show. Jin Woo is Memories of the Alhambra. Hyun Bin is back on top of dramaland, and he so deserves it. He never overacts and his performance is so understated, but I felt for him throughout his roller coaster ride, the slow descent from an arrogant CEO to someone who is questioning his own sanity, truly one for the books. He suffered and survived on his own, not wanting to include others in the cursed bug, tried to make a new 'normal' for himself and had the tenacious will to finish the game till the bitter end.

The ending left me with a melancholic feeling, but given the chance I'll watch it all over again. All those memories with Jin Woo and Hee Ju are worth all the anxiety it caused me. Not the best of wrap ups, but what do we know? Maybe one day it'll be raining, and you'll hear a familiar guitar song playing, and when you look up, you'll once again see that impish smirk, we already dearly miss. We'll wait for you, Jin Woo.

#memories of the alhambra #hyun bin #park shin hye #chanyeol #kdrama #korean drama #review #cassey final review

[sunarocks]

Thirty Questions!

From http://otp-imagines-cult.tumblr.com/post/132479890037/otp-questions

1: Who spends almost all their money on the other?

Lee. He took a serious amount of A-ranked missions and used almost all of his money to support Gaara's hobby in cultivating cacti. Gaara sure had money to spare but since he was a Kage, he was extremely careful to use them for his personal stuff. Also, Lee had no hobby- (jumping side to side is NOT a hobby, Lee.)

2: Who sleeps in the other’s lap? Lee. Gaara once tried to sleep on Lee's lap but he found his tights are all MUSCLES, they hurt his neck and shoulder. Gaara would prefer Lee's torso, though. His chest, especially.

3: Who walks around the house half-naked and who yells at them to put on some clothes? Lee would roam around the house with a towel or blanket and Gaara would slap the shit out of him using his sand fight me.

4: Which one tells the other not to stay up all night and which one stays up all night anyway? Lee would tell Gaara to sleep right away but Gaara, being an ex-vessel of Shukaku, couldn't help his continuous insomnia. He might let Lee sleep first, he would read some books while Lee hugged his waist. (DOMESTIC FLUFF ALERT ME DEAD)

5: Which one tries to make food for the other but burns it all by accident and which one tells them that it’s okay and makes them both cookies? Gaara thought that baking had the same difficulties as gardening but he was wrong. Lee, had he lived alone for a long time, knew how to cook so he would be the one to offer some help. I could imagine he patted Gaara's head and the Kage was sulking lmao.

6: Which one reads OTP prompts and says “Oh that’s us!” and which one goes “Eh, not really”? Lee would yell with extreme enthusiasm and Gaara was being all dense. It was canon that Gaara was a DEADPAN when it came to romance. He didn't even notice Temari's relationship with Shikamaru, BUT KANKURO DID.

7: Which one constantly wears the other’s clothes? Gaara. I assumed that Lee didn't wear his signature green spandex when he was at home. Maybe a pair of matching pajamas or a simple t-shirt, but Gaara would prefer wearing Lee's instead of his own. Especially when Lee was away on a mission because of yea right, Gaara, you didn't miss him. Also, we don't want to see Lee in the mesh clothing. It'd screw you.

8: Which one spends all day running errands and which one says “You remembered [thing], right?” Lee, OF COURSE. And Gaara being Gaara, he would tell Lee a countless time not to forget anything on his list. Lee could be dumb, sometimes, and Gaara wasn't famous for his patience.

9: Which one drives the car and which one gives them directions? OMG COLLEGE AU /no Lee would do the driving and Gaara would read the maps. Gaara didn't trust Lee for doing things required some brains. (sorry, Lee.) Also, it was in his blood for being sassy, bossy, and to order someone else around. Lee was happy with that, though.

10: Which one does the posing while the other one draws? None. (...) Both of them are not that artistic type. Maybe Sai would draw them together.

11: If they were about to rob a museum, which one does backflips through lasers and which one is strolling behind with a bag of chips? ISN'T IT OBVIOUS. Lee was the executor. He would do all the dirty jobs since he mastered hand-to-hand-combat and Gaara was waiting in the car, munching on cooked gizzard, as he was the mastermind behind the robbery. He has done enough.

12: Which one of your OTP overdoes it on the alcohol and which one makes the other stop drinking. This is funny because Gaara dislikes alcohol and Lee couldn't stand it either. Even in a social gathering, Gaara preferred cold tea (this is canon from Gaara Hiden) and Lee, a single drop of alcohol would drive him insane. So, none. They both wouldn't touch the beverages in the first place.

13: Which one likes to surprise the other with a lot of small random gifts? Lee would. And it would be totally random. He would pick a heart-shaped stone in the middle of his way back from a mission as a souvenir because it reminded him of Gaara's scar on his forehead. THAT random.

14: Which one keeps accidentally using the other’s last name instead of their own? None. In the world of Shinobi, the clan is as important as the way of the ninja. Not to mention that Gaara had an obligation to keep his name and clan and blood as an identity. Rock Lee was one of two last Lees in the world so they would keep it that way.

15: Which one screams about the spider and which one brings the spider outside? THEY BOTH WOULD KILL THE SPIDER USING THEIR SUPERB JUTSU. Fouth gate and Sand Waterfall Imperial Funeral. Might end up destroying the apartment, too.

16: Which one gives the other their jacket? It was canon when Gaara said that even his sand couldn't counter extreme temperature drop in the middle of the desert. Lee would be the one to offer Gaara his jacket and jokingly said that he could open the First Gate to warm himself up. Gaara would smack his head for that. 17: Who keeps getting threatened by the other’s overprotective older sibling? WE ALL KNOW WHERE IS THIS GOING LMAO. Temari would act like a bad cop, Kankuro as the good one. Kankuro and Lee got along well as we saw them in Shippuden #497 but I guess Temari, no matter how much she supported their relationship, would always remind Lee to take good care of her little brother. Oh yes, she spoiled him a LOT. 18: Who’s the first one to admit they have feelings for the other? Lee was a sincere person. As their relationship went closer than just a friend, Lee would likely think that it was perfectly fine if Gaara didn't realize his feeling. He told himself to keep himself together while Gaara already realized it a long time ago but decided to deny it. When Gaara eventually accepted his special, romantic feeling toward Lee, he would ask Lee if Lee felt the same and Lee was like, "I HAVE LOVED YOU FOR A DECADE ALREADY BUT THANK YOU FOR NOTICING IT." 19: How good would your OTP be at parenting? DAMN GOOD. They were both single parents with a son who were raised well and somehow a complete blueprint of them in their younger age. They even didn't find a wife to do that and it left me speechless. Two gay dads are what we need in Boruto series, proof me wrong.

20: Which one types with perfect grammar and which one types using numbers as letters? Gaara, HE WAS A KAGE, he had to write everything in perfection as he dealt with official reports and he had to submit it to the Councils. But Rock Lee wasn't that corny either, he wrote in a decent way. Not a flowery one, but also he wouldn't use numbers as letters.

21: Who gets attacked by a bully and who protects them? GAARA BULLIED LEE LMAO. No seriously Gaara did all the bullies and Lee is like, STOP IT, BABE, YOU COULD LITERALLY KILL THEM. He was almost killed once let's get real smh. 22: Who makes the bad puns and who makes a pained smile every time the other makes a pun? This one is also obvious. Lee did the pun and Gaara would sigh a long long long breathe because Lee reminded him to his own brother. 23: Who comes home from work to see that the other one bought a puppy? Lee would come home and see Gaara adopted A FREAKING CHILD. 24: Which one gives the other a piggyback ride when they’re tired? Lee gave Gaara a piggyback because the Kage was clingy. 25: Which one competes in some sort of activity and which one does the overzealous cheering? Lee loved to compete and roamed around randomly challenged people but Gaara wouldn't do the cheering so... But if Gaara was challenged by someone and he accepted it, Lee would undoubtedly express his enthusiasm.

26: Who takes a selfie when the other one falls asleep on their shoulder? Lee and he would BRAG it on social media. 27: Which one would give the other a makeover if they asked? Well, we saw Gaara in various clothing and hairstyles, so I guess Gaara would give Lee some makeover. The first thing he would get rid of was the bowl-cut, let's bet. 28: Which one owns a pet that the other is absolutely terrified of? Gaara. He once had Shukaku and everybody feared him for that /NOT IN THAT CONTEXT- But seriously, Gaara adopted an iron-sand user, so he most likely owned a dangerous/exotic pet and Lee had to push himself to feed them. 29: Which one holds the umbrella over both of them when it rains? Lee. He knew that Gaara's sand would be weakened in contact with water. So he would keep his spouse safe by shielding him... using an umbrella. Sometimes you can't just rely on your 'absolute defense'. 30: If your OTP went on vacation, where would they go and what would they do? Who would take the pictures? Both of them are practical type so laying on the bed all days was counted as a vacation. But since canonically Gaara considered Konoha as a 'paradise' due to its tropical climate and was blessed by rain, they would simply go to Konoha and enjoyed the... Forest. Lee would take a lot of pictures of his husband it would cringe everyone who saw the result.

#LeeGaa #gaalee #Gaara #rock lee #Sabaku No Gaara #otp prompts