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favefandomimagines · 4 years

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Reservations (r.p.)

Summary: joining the cast of a show with one of the most sought after young stars, tends to result in reservations

AN: posting chapter 8 of soul surfer TOMORROW!!! (shoutout to @jjsfineline for the cutest gif on the internet! i just found your post again & needed to give you credit for the gif!!!)

You were beyond thrill when you were cast in season two of Outer Banks. It wasn’t your first acting role, having been apart of the MCU since 2016.

But Outer Banks was a hit Netflix series and it was a new platform for you. You were playing JJ’s kook love interest and you were very excited to be working alongside Rudy Pankow.

He may or may not have been your celebrity crush since you watched season one.

And for him, you were the ultimate “superhero babe.” He made the whole cast watch every movie you were in since the very beginning of your acting career.

The whole cast knew Rudy’s crush on you so when you were cast, the teasing began.

It was the first day on set for you and you and Madelyn were getting put into your outfits for your first scene of the day.

“We’re all going out for dinner tonight. Wanna come?” She offered. “Really? You want me to come?” You questioned. “Of course! You’re apart of this family now and I won’t take no for an answer.” Madelyn told you.

You smiled at her before nodding your head. “Okay, I’m in.” You said.

The director called for you two to report to set. You walked out. with Madelyn, making small talk and instantly gaining the attention of Rudy.

He found it hard not to stare at you, especially with how the sun made your skin glow.

“Dude quit staring. It’s creepy.” Chase told him. “What? I-I’m not staring.” Rudy rebutted. “You totally are.” JD said. The three stopped their discussion of you when you and Madelyn approached them.

“Hey guys! Y/N is gonna come with us tonight!” Madelyn informed them. “Great! I feel like we haven’t gotten to know you yet.” Chase replied. “Even though we read your Wikipedia page and stalked your Instagram.” JD added.

You found it sort of flattering that they were so interested in getting to know you.

The day went on without any issues. You and Rudy filmed your your first couple scenes together and it felt natural to be scene partners. You’ve been opposite of Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans and with Rudy, it felt like that rapport was already there.

After everyone was changed out of their character outfits, Madelyn and Madison came to your trailer to get you for dinner.

“Hey! Are you ready to go?” Madelyn asked. “Yeah! Just let me put some perfume on.” You answered. “Rudy could not keep his eyes off of you.” Madison commented.

“What?” You laughed. “He is so into you.” Madelyn teased. “He made us watch every Marvel movie you were in.” Madison added.

You looked down at your feet trying to hide how much you were blushing. “Oh my god! You like him too!” Madelyn exclaimed. “It’s just a little crush.” You replied quietly. “Aw, that’s so cute.” Madison said.

“But he’s dating that photographer. I’ve seen the pictures and the videos and don’t even get me started on the Instagram page dedicated to them.” You quickly said. “Wh-” Madelyn started before a knock on the door cut her off.

The three girls exited the trailer and met up with the boys. They went to a local restaurant in Charleston. One they hoped they wouldn’t get recognized at now that the show has blown up.

You were seated between Drew and Rudy, taking turns talking to them. As you were talking to Drew, you felt a light tap on your shoulder.

You turned around and saw a little girl standing behind you, wearing a shirt with your Marvel character on it.

“Are you Y/F/N Y/L/N?” She asked. “Yes I am.” You answered sweetly. “Ruby is my favorite superhero. I love you. Can I get a picture with you?” She asked. “Of course you can!” You told her.

You situated your chair so you were facing the camera and hugged the girl. Her mom took the picture and they both thanked you and said goodbye.

You turned back around and saw Rudy staring at you rather fondly. “What?” You asked. “That was amazing. You’re amazing.” He answered. “Oh, thanks.” You answered bashfully.

“Do you do that all the time?” He asked. “Yeah, when I can. Especially when they’re younger like that.” You answered.

He smiled at you you before he nudged you playfully. “Could you be anymore perfect?” He asked rhetorically.

‘He’s really laying it on thick.’ You thought. Then you remembered the potential girlfriend. Your face fell slightly and you were grateful that Drew had started talking to you.

Rudy saw the way your expression changed. He furrowed his eyebrows and then nudged Madelyn.

“What’s up with Y/N?” He asked. “She’s totally gonna kill me for this but she thinks you and Elaine are dating. Apparently there’s a huge conspiracy theory about the two of you?” Madelyn answered.

“What? I’m not dating Elaine! Everyone knows that.” Rudy said. “Apparently not everyone.” The girl said.

He then looked back at you, a smile adorning your face as you talked to Drew. After that night, Rudy tried to make it painfully obvious that he was single and into you.

Daily flirting, going to lunch and dinner with you, offering to run lines with you.

The night it actually worked in his favor, was the night before you two had to shoot a big scene. It was the turning point of your characters’ relationship.

You were struggling to convey your character’s emotions and feelings towards Rudy’s character. Of course filming with Rudy was easy but sometimes it was still hard.

You were sitting on the couch of your apartment in Charleston, going over your lines when Rudy just walked in.

“You know there’s a door for a reason.” You greeted the blonde. “Oh come on, we’re past that point. We can come and go as we please.” He replied. “Whatcha doin?” He asked sitting next to you.

“Trying to convey the proper amount of emotion for our scene tomorrow.” You said. That’s when Rudy had an idea.

“I know something that may help.” He said. “Oh and what’s that? Nothing could be worse than Russo’s telling me to pretend Tony Stark as my actual father to make me cry harder.” You said.

Rudy smiled at you as he took the script from your hands and tossed it on the coffee table.

“I like you, Y/N. And not as a friend, as more than a friend. I’ve had the biggest crush on you and before you say anything, I’m not dating Elaine. You know how fans can get. I mean, I was convinced you were dating Tom Holland for months.” He said.

“Me and Tom have never dated.” You laughed. “And me and Elaine have never dated because I like you and only you.” Rudy said.

You looked over at him and rested your legs on his lap. “Really?” You questioned. “I’d be stupid not to.” He answered. “So what now?” You asked. “Go out with me. Just us.” He answered. “I’m in.” You said. “Oh thank god.” Rudy replied, a sigh of relief leaving his lips.

It had been three months since you and Rudy had started dating and you hoped the shipping of him and Elaine would cease.

But it didn’t. The theories kept coming and the various Instagram pages continued to be made.

Rudy seemed to have no idea and you even noticed that Elaine was even liking the most recent posts.

You of course were not comfortable with it so you knew you had to tell Rudy.

You were sitting in your shared apartment, watching Netflix when you turned to him.

“Hey, Rudy?” You asked. “What’s up, babe?” He replied. “I’ve noticed that Elaine has been liking a lot of the posts about you and her dating and it’s making me a little uncomfortable because she’s apart of the friend group and I don’t know if she has feelings for you or what. And I don’t know it just doesn’t sit right with me.” You explained.

Rudy was quiet for a moment, looking back at all the times Elaine did something and liked photos that but he didn’t notice.

“I’m not saying you should stop being friends with her, I’d never dictate your friend ships but maybe you can talk to her or something.” You added.

“I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t realize you were feeling this way. I’ll call her right now.” He said, resting a hand on your thigh and pulling out his phone. “No, Rudy,” You started but it was already too late.

He put the phone on speaker as the line started ringing.

“Hello?” The girl answered. “Hey, Elaine. There’s something I need to talk to you about.” Rudy said. “Uh oh.” She laughed.

Rudy gave her a half-hearted version of a laugh before continuing.

“Y/N has noticed that you are liking posts about you and I dating and being a couple and it’s making her uncomfortable. And I never want to put her in a situation that would make her feel that way. I love her and I respect her and her feelings so I’m kindly asking you to stop doing that.” He explained.

“Oh come on, Rudy, they’re just jokes.” Elaine said. Your face fell slightly as you started to nervously play with the ring on your finger.

Rudy noticed and took your hand in his before he replied.

“They’re not jokes to her and they’re not to me. Everyone else respects my relationship so why can’t you?” He asked a little more harshly.

“Look, Elaine, I want to keep being your friend but Y/N is my girlfriend and I’m in love with her. So if you can’t start respecting Y/N and I’s relationship then we can’t be friends anymore.” Rudy added.

You looked up at him with wide eyes, not wanting him to give up a friendship because you were insecure.

“Okay. I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was that serious. And I’m sorry if it’s putting a strain on your relationship.” Elaine finally said. The conversation seemed to die after that and Rudy hung up.

“You love me?” You asked with a shy smile on your face. Rudy smiled at you and cupped your face in his hands. “Of course I do. So much.” He replied before kissing you deeply.

@rudeth: my love, my life @y/f/n_

#imagine #imagines #jj maybank #jj maybank imagine #outer banks #jj maybank x reader #kiara carrera #outer banks imagine #rafe cameron #rudy pankow #rudy pankow x reader #rudy pankow imagine #john b routledge #pope heyward #sarah cameron

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darkpoisonouslove · 3 years

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Sparks of Life Opera Edition

I am still not over Singing a New Tune so I am going to recap for you the experience of writing that fic because there were many interesting moments over the course of those three days. Lemme start from the beginning.

- So I’m writing a fic that mostly focuses on sexual stuff but it is also mainly happening in an opera so my first order of business is to figure out what that opera is. Both the building itself and the show they’ll be watching. Because that is of utmost importance.

- I have already mentioned that SoL is located in New York so I looked up New York operas. I do not vibe with research most of the time but I vibe even less with having to come up with names for any kind of thing so research was definitely the choice here.

- I somehow get results about operas that are in the other end of the USA. That was not great. I get to the Metropolitan Opera House at last (which I might have known existed if I cared about opera in any way, shape or form) which is great! I am so close to starting the fic! Just need to figure out what opera they’re watching. Because I need that for reasons.

- I end up downloading a PDF with the seatings inside the Met Opera so that I can figure out where the hell they will be seating. But I leave that for later. I look through the actual plays that they’re having while absolutely failing with the navigation of their site. I find a show that catches my eye. It’s called The Magic Flute. I have zero idea what it’s about so I read the Wikipedia summary just to be aware. It mentions that a character has a moment when he’s singing about his search for a wife and I think “Perfect! Foreshadowing!” (since this is set pretty early on in Griffin and Valtor’s relationship).

- I decide to look up the opera and see if I can find a part of it on youtube to figure out how it will sound. I am pretty sold on it already because of the summary I read and also because it implies there is magic as a subject in it which would call back to canon. Still, I look it up. I find a full version of it on the internet with English subtitles... It is 2 hours and 35 minutes:

youtube

- “Wow, okay... that’s a bit much. But hey, it has got subtitles in English. Maybe I’d actually watch that... once I’m done with the fic. I’m just gonna listen to a little bit while I finish my research, though, so I can have an idea of what it sounds like.”

- Now it’s time to open the engagement fic - Enough to Be Yours - because I don’t remember what year they got engaged in and I need that to reverse engineer the year in which this fic is taking place so that I can make sure that The Magic Flute was being performed back then. I don’t have an year stated in the engagement fic, though. I have a date - 9th October which is Friday and that means the year is 2015. Great! So I need to figure out if they were performing The Magic Flute back in 2010. Great.

- That takes a shit ton of time and nerves as it turns out. I spent over 4 hours just researching the logistics for this fic and a lot of that was unnecessary but I’m getting ahead of myself.

- I cannot find out whether they were performing the Magic Flute in 2010. I get results of it being broadcast in English (for the first time, I believe) in 2012 but that is way too late for this fic to be happening. Also, they are speaking of a broadcast which just doesn’t work for me. So I am having a hard time over here.

- I find a list of the new titles in 2011 but nothing mentions The Magic Flute as far as I can see.

- I am now considering switching to another opera. I see an opera that is based on events from The Song of the Nibelungs (I cannot be assed to go back and check what the actual title was). That catches my eye because I have read a book that was titled The Ring of the Nibelungs, I believe, and I kinda remember stuff from it... which is what makes me hesitate because that was a big tragedy.

- Meanwhile, I have stumbled upon a trailer for The Magic Flute:

youtube

MY GOD IS THAT BEAUTIFUL! THOSE PROPS ARE FUCKING GORGEOUS! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN THAT YOU GET TO GO AND SEE THAT LIVE? THAT IS NUTS! (Also, when I mentioned paper birds (I think they are) in the fic, I meant the ones shown in 0:13, not the big one in the beginning but HOLY SHIT, DID YOU SEE THAT THING????? HOW IS THAT REAL?!?!?!?! IT IS SO FUCKING AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN’T. I AM DYING. THIS IS JUST TOO BEAUTIFUL.)

- I somehow happen upon an old archive of the opera (idk how I did that but I bookmarked it in case I’ll need it again) that has information about plays going back as far as the year 1900. This is nuts! I am in too deep but I can’t pull myself away. I’ve gotten this far, I will see it through.

- I search for keyword “flute” and I get results. Some of them are pretty old but I finally find what I need. Performances of the Magic Flute in 2010! Bingo!

- ...Oh, wait, they’re all around Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Hmm... when will it be okay for them to go? I mean, Valtor has been established to have zero free time around that time of the year and I can’t see them going on the 24th or the 31st... Oh, those are matinees. Definitely no! I need them to go in the evening. And some of these are broadcasts which doesn’t work for me either.

- I looked up earlier years as well. I considered another opera again. I decided to switch up the timeline a little. It makes sense if it’s in 2009. I think they had spring performances of The Magic Flute then. Or was it 2008? Anyway, I finally settle on an early April date in 2009 (I think). Now that that’s settled, let’s go back to the seats.

- First I need to figure out what floor (let’s say) of the opera they’re on. I was thinking of the last one first (family circle) but the boxes (I figure those seats will be safest for their activities) look like this:

which isn’t vibing with me because they would be in the front row and it seems more visible. So I relocate to the previous floor (balcony) that looks like this:

That works a little better although there’s the danger of having more people in their box. But they’re sitting in box 14, seats 5 (Griffin) and 6 (Valtor) (where the arrow is pointing) and there’s only one man in seat 4 in front of them. So that is the best I can do.

- Wow, all that’s finally figured out. I decide to do all the rest of the research up front in order to be able to just write after that and not stop for another 4 hours. More on those other things later BUT I get to the part where I need to pick a vibrator and... well, I done fucked up.

- First thing that comes up for a remote controlled vibrator is Lush, of course. And I am immediately sold because it has a sound activated setting which Valtor will definitely love to utilize while in the opera.

BUT

Lush 2 (which is the first one to have the sound activated setting, I believe) came out in 2018. Even if we accept that Lush also has it, that came out in 2015. My fic is set in 2009. Searching for 2009 vibrators literally went no where so in the end I decided that the SoL verse is actually set in a parallel universe where time is a little warped so the Lush 2 is out in 2009. Plus, that way there isn’t going to be a pandemic in future installments. Overall, that works. Except that I needn’t have been so thorough with my opera research beforehand. Oh, well. It’s finally time to start writing.

- How do you write? How do you start a fic? One word in front of the other? Oh, okay, never mind. Lipstick is a girl’s best friend. Let’s start from there. And a kiss that leads to the discussion of lipstick... Damn, I forgot to spend one more hour on researching what kind of lipstick Griffin would have worn. Shame! You don’t get that detail now. I believe I didn’t even mention a shade.

- Oh, wait. Need for his breath to taste like something. Hmm, let’s see. Tonic water? Yeah, that sounds about right. Never mind that he should have probably drunk it right before getting out of the car to kiss her if it was still lingering on his breath. I mean, that’s not impossible. Just improbable.

- He’s also wearing cologne, right? Gotta research that too. How else would I get this:

and zero idea what it actually smells like despite the description. Also, did not check if that was a thing in 2009 but the story now exists in a vacuum so who cares.

- Apparently, Griffin doesn’t own any golden bracelets even though she does have a golden necklace? Or she could have a golden bracelet, just not one she likes for the current situation? Anyway, I wanted to mention Ediltrude as well because the twins always go together and that was the best I came up with. (That said, I didn’t need to put the mentions of them one sentence apart.)

- My god, I used a semicolon! That feels illegal. I sure hope I used that bitch correctly.

- Okay, I absolutely love all the banter and just flow in the car. Idk how I did that since it’s such a constricted space but I am really proud of it. However, the logistics were sometimes hard to logic my way through. I mean, Valtor doesn’t get to look at her a lot and I had to employ a red traffic light to give him the chance to do so.

- I hit a wall about three paragraphs later. Things started going in a weird direction. I was considering even deleting the last two lines but then I managed to get back on track thanks to having figured out how they met and I decided to write a little bit about that without spoiling it (that will be a fic of its own some day). Suffice it to say it was a meet-very-ugly. But it bailed me out. Also, they got over it so it’s all good.

- And now... that paragraph. You know which one I’m talking about. It stands out with the locations I’ve given. That paragraph required 30 minutes of looking at Google Earth to figure it out and I still nearly got it wrong. At that point it occurred to me that they’ll need a place to park. I mean, idk how parking is in NYC but it’s probably not the way it is in Bulgaria especially on small neighborhood streets where it’s just... park wherever (even in front of a garage if you’re brazen enough and don’t fear having your tires slashed). So first, I was going to have them coming down Tenth Avenue and passing by the backside of the Opera which is not ideal for me because I needed Griffin to figure out they’re going to the opera so that they can have the following dialogue. But there is the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts right next door so I figure Griffin will recognize the area if it’s next to a library. And I have them almost at the garage but... that’s not looking right. This garage is on 65th Street and mine is on 62nd... I have been looking at the wrong garage for the past hour. Now that I have caught that mistake, things get easier. They just drive right past the facade of the opera, take a right turn and then enter the garage. Easy peasy. For whoever’s actually paying attention to the map.

- They’re in the garage now and I have to write another kiss. Shoot! I do not vibe with writing kisses. Writing sex scenes is much easier. But I’ll try my best because this is a little bit necessary if we’re dealing with an insertion of a vibrator in a public bathroom one minute from now. (Again, logistics!) I actually went back to add in a little discomfort during the kiss (but not too much because they’re consumed with each other anyway and probably missed something) just to make it more realistic. They can’t be comfortable in the car. Also, you have got to love how I never even thought of what make the car is. But I did stop to research the tinting of the car windows.

- Now this is extremely funny but I would have had zero idea that there are different laws about how tinted your car windows can be in the USA if I hadn’t read a very extensive critique of Fifty Shades (whichever part it was that had that info). So I look up the VLT for New York and it says 70%. Great! Then it won’t be that visible through the windows what they’re doing inside. Oh, wait! VLT means Visible Light Transmission aka 70% of the light should be passing through the window. Aka it is only tinted on 30%. This much:

That’s practically nothing. You can see everything through it. Welp, then someone’s gonna see, I guess.

- Can’t believe I didn’t stop to look up clutches either. (Lmao, I was calling it a purse instead of a clutch at first even though I definitely meant a clutch. And then I remembered that clutch existed as a word. Who would’ve thought?) It’s baffling trying to figure out why my brain was prioritizing some details over others and I just genuinely have no idea what was going on.

- Griffin is blushing a lot in this. Can you tell I have no idea how else to convey Valtor giving her feelings through body language?

- I first envisioned the box being opened by the hair pin by turning it like a key. Only later did I realize that that wouldn’t be possible because the pin has two parts (whatever they’re called) and that would make turning it impossible unless all of the base fits into one hole in the lid of the box. So I had to adapt my vision to using the extensions at the ends of the hair pin like a hook that pulls the lid up once it’s clicked free. I have zero idea how that would be done but I’m sure it can be done. So yeah, anyway, the pin looks like this but with attachments at the ends to open the box:

- I might have gone a little overboard with Griffin’s reaction to having the vibrator inside her. I might have made her a bit too embarrassed but I still think that she simply wouldn’t appreciate someone knowing about what she considers a private experience (despite the very public setting).

- And I am being overly specific again with the seats but I worked for that information so you’re getting it against your will!

- Speaking of, that man in their box was pretty ignored throughout the fic. But then again Griffin wasn’t overflowing with lucidity. She is sure to have missed... A Lot, actually.

- My apologies (once again) to @her-majesty-wears-jeans for not letting Griffin punch Valtor in the face for the terrible pun he was about to make but I thought that that would ruin the mood so I had to skip it.

- I might have imagined things a little differently but then consent factored in and I had to change things up so that Griffin is clearly on board with everything. I hope it came through that way at least. She is on board even if she is very, very frustrated. She would never throw the bet just because it’s difficult for her. Though, I’m taking note for future fics of maybe being a little bit more explicit about the enjoyment of all parties involved. I just couldn’t really think of a way to convey it better back then and I am coming up with several ideas now and I will try to keep them in mind for future fics.

- I keep going back and forth on just how far into their relationship this is. Sometimes it feels like it’s not enough time for them to get this familiar with each other and sometimes it feels like too much for them to still be skirting their feelings for each other like that. Will update when I make up my mind about how long exactly it has been.

- In retrospect, probably should have picked up an opera that people would be less likely to bring their children to (as brought to my attention by @her-majesty-wears-jeans). I apologize for this. Did not consider it at all.

- A wild tangent about Griffin’s sexual experiences before Valtor popped up (for the second time now). This is giving me thoughts and I am not even sure if I’ll manage to get them all out in the bachelorette party fic. Oh, no, I am getting ideas again.

- God, I had to mention those paper birds because I adore them. Also, needed to do a time skip somehow (sure hope they don’t show up at the very end or the very beginning).

- So there are some things about the whole thing with the suit jacket that if you squint, you’ll miss the very far-fetched and convoluted ways in which I could make them make sense but again, it isn’t impossible to make them operate according to logic so good enough.

- And now for the dress:

I thought it would be reasonable for Griffin to own something like that. It doesn’t look overly expensive or dramatic.

- I swear that most of the 2% angst was an accident. Griffin was supposed to say the “You paid how much for tickets exactly just so you could fool around?” line but the following few paragraphs sprang on me out of nowhere. That was where I left it off the first day I was working on it and I wasn’t sure how to continue it. Then the angst happened.

- I do not believe the retaliation part was planned but would it really be a Griffin x Valtor story if something like that hadn’t happened? XD

- “reverberated”, “multitudinous” and “unobtainable” are probably not words that Griffin’s muddled mind would go to in that precise moment but everything else I came up with for them just did not sound right.

- I completely forgot the word for neckline and was so mad at myself for that but, luckily, I managed to remember it before posting the fic. I believe the original read “he slipped a finger under the fabric of her dress, running it over the top of her breast” which is not incorrect but just not precise enough for my liking.

- Sure hope the shortened version of the opera did not cut out the ending musical sequence. But that seems unlikely.

- The idea was running overly long in my head by having them going back to the penthouse so that I could have the scene where he picked her up so I decided to move things around and have him carry her bridal style on their way from the opera to the car. It’s not like she didn’t earn it.

- Pretty sure I had planned something a little different for the last several lines of dialogue but I couldn’t remember what so we get this. Which isn’t a disadvantage. I mean, Griffin is already thinking of marrying him. XD (That’s probably a bit of a stretch at the current status of their relationship but then again, she was thinking of a wedding, not necessarily of their wedding even though I’m clearly a little romance gargoyle that meant exactly that.)

- Originally, Valtor was supposed to floor the brakes while they were out in the NYC traffic but then I decided that doing it while still in the garage with only one car behind them and both vehicles driving at a very slow speed was a lot safer so I switched to that. It also saved me writing more words which was appreciated. I thought this fic would be a bit shorter.

- I was at a loss for how many orgasms Griffin should want from him but then the commitment line happened and that was all avoided.

#winx club #winx griffin #winx valtor #griffin x valtor #covenshipping #sparks of life #singing a new tune #trivia #trivia tuesday #research #my writing process #the magic flute #yeah no cut and this is gonna be hell on mobile #i know #i'm evil

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goose-books · 3 years

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& while i am posting things today. some more maxwriting, specifically two mini-fanfictions for yves. @yvesdot ’s WIP the one and only universe of kay rainier (would recommend! arguments to lovers! he/him wlw! interdimensional (?) shenanigans!) one of which also features an OC i've mentioned a few times on this blog but done historically very little with.

it’s occurred to me in my moment of posting that neither of these pieces have titles. oh well.

THE FIRST ONE

you ought to send yves. some bingo prompts. anyway, i sent them kay + daemons, and then immediately realized i had ideas and thoughts about that, too. so i wrote my own version. unlike theirs, this is vaguely set in the HDM universe, which is funny because i haven’t read HDM and learned everything i know from waya vivji, a single war and peace fanfiction, and also wikipedia just before i wrote it. the notable context here is that daemons are usually the “opposite sex” of their humans, and if i got that wrong do not tell me because i am embarrassed.

Kay is a precocious child; she is twelve years old when her daemon settles. Chesire is a sleek dark mahogany, a ferruginous hawk with a wickedly curved beak and eyes that glitter like beads. He is also male. This, for the Rainiers, is not done; even the absent Ariel, despite his eccentricities, had a properly gendered daemon. It unsettles Kay in a way she will not place for many years; still, as soon as she registers her disappointment (for it must be disappointment, surely; nothing more), she’s awash in guilt.

“How lovely,” she tells him, stroking his glossy new feathers, keeping her voice low less to keep out her father and more because it is only polite. Cheshire bobs his head and flutters his wings and seems, very slightly, to preen. He must be able to sense her uncertainty, the subdued flatness to her voice, but he is a Rainier as well; the polite thing is to ignore it, and he does.

“How curious,” Father says, stroking Fauntleroy’s velvet ears.

“Not unheard of,” the dormouse says from her seat in his breast pocket. Constantine inclines his head slightly; he does not deign to offer more.

When the Neighborly enters the house the jackal stalks at his heel, ears pricked at attention, wet black nose gleaming, mouth crooked open in a canine grin. With it comes a distinct smell — not unpleasant so much as it is unbalancing, an earthy scent, filling the foyer as its claws click on the floor. Like his clothes, it is black, head to toe. They aren’t usually. Kay wonders if it’s coincidence, if perhaps he dyes its fur so it will match.

She thinks of it as such — it — because to be frank she is not sure what to make of Atlas, and what to assume about his daemon. During the customary introductions, Cheshire perches atop Kay’s shoulder, and Fauntleroy emerges from her pocket to whisk up to Father’s collar and cling to the fabric to study the Neighborly. He can’t stay quite still. His hands twitch at his sides. He shifts his weight. The jackal paces maddening circles around the room, eyeing the dark walls and the fine wooden furniture, too dignified to lower its head and sniff but not too good to cast judgment without speaking. Every time it passes Kay in its slow inexorable orbit, Cheshire’s claws tighten on her coat.

“It’s a pleasure, Atlas,” Constantine says stiffly, extending a hand to shake with an expression that suggests he’d rather have it removed.

Atlas shakes, grinning easily, a looseness to his motions, and then he tilts his head and says, “Anubis.” In a moment the jackal’s at his side, curling around the backs of his legs to turn its wet smile on Kay’s father. It’s too large; that’s what she decides. How does he take it anywhere? Why hasn’t it learned to behave? Unless this is his goal: to part rooms, to announce his presence as soon as he steps through the threshold.

“Anubis,” she says, the first time she and Atlas are alone. “Like the god?” Atlas and Anubis; it is the sort of half-joke she can appreciate.

Anubis looks up at its name. Atlas looks at it. “I don’t know,” he says. “It was my sister’s idea.” He looks to Cheshire, who has settled near Kay’s inkwell to reorganize her pens. “And this is…”

“Cheshire.”

“Cheshire,” Atlas repeats, piercing glinting as his eyebrow quirks.

“When I was younger, I thought he would be a cat.”

“I thought she’d be a crow. Probably better this way. Crows are poser birds.” Anubis snorts at that, a sound both doggish and human.

“She is… she, then,” Kay says carefully.

“Oh, yeah. Apparently that’s weird.” Atlas leans back in Kay’s chair until the front legs leave the ground.

“Is it,” Kay says.

Atlas’s eyes flit around her face, like he knows what she’s asking; his smirk doesn’t lessen. “Well, women have male daemons, right? Ask Cheshire.”

Kay and Cheshire look at each other. Cheshire fluffs his feathers and says, “This is dull.”

Kay is less certain. She does not smile at Atlas, but some of the edge has smoothed from her voice. “I should like to watch you explain it to my father.”

“If he could take it,” Atlas says. “What’s the mouse’s fucking name again?”

Cheshire steps back and forth, feathers ruffling, until Kay sets a hand out to still him, gentle, comforting. “Fauntleroy.”

“Christ,” Atlas says. “Bless you.” When he catches Kay stiffening, he relents a little, letting the chair clatter back to the floor. “Fits the vibe, I guess.”

“As yours fits you,” says Kay, making it as uncomplimentary as she can.

“Guess my soul’s black,” Atlas says cheerily. He balls up a piece of paper and tosses it to Anubis, who, flopped across the floor, doesn’t move. “Not the weirdest thing about us.”

“Well,” Kay says, “I think it would be rather unfair for me to talk about oddities,” and she takes a small victory in the look they share: not friendship, not fondness, but something like an understanding, reached in the quiet moment before Cheshire hands her another pen and she resumes her work.

THE SECOND ONE

this one’s a bit older but i never posted it until now, at yves.’s urging! i think i was doing... camp nano last year? or something. and couldn’t think of what to write. or maybe i couldn’t focus on my project because i was thinking about my other project, the butch4butch hamlet retelling i still haven’t written. to which yves. said, “write kay x your lesbian hamlet character,” to which i said, “you don’t think i will, but i will,” and i did. so really this is yvesmax crossover fic.

It is annoying, Holden’s habit of dropping by whenever she likes. This can probably be attributed to the fact that Holden, herself, is annoying. Kay can only adjust the items on her desk (pens, mainly) so many times; she is caught up in an aggravating state of waiting but also not waiting, and she does not care for that.

Just as she thinks so, there’s a knock at the front door.

Holden doesn’t ring the doorbell anymore. She did that the first time and Kay came down the stairs a few seconds too late to find Father staring at the creature in his front hall, looking like he didn’t know whether he should be put out or concerned. “I think the earrings got him,” Holden said later, on Kay’s bed, tapping the crosses hanging inverted from her ears. Kay’s opinion was that it was all of her, from the messy post-buzz hair to the propensity for suits to the Doc Martens to the way Holden leans on any available surface.

She opens the door and Holden is leaning against the doorframe. Which looks a little more awkward coupled with whatever she’s carrying under her arm.

“Hi,” she says.

Kay blinks slowly.

“It is late,” she says, spinning on her heel and heading for the stairs. Behind her, she hears the quiet click of Holden closing the door. The grandfather clock in the front hall is ticking toward eleven.

“I never get over how weird this place is.” When she glances back, Holden is peering into the nearest glass cabinet. “Like a little dollhouse.”

“Thank you,” Kay says stiffly. She cannot decide whether she is irritable.

“And this is coming from someone whose parents were devoted to taxidermy.” Holden follows her up the stairs, hands shoved into the pockets of her suit jacket, looking entirely too comfortable here, and Kay decides that she is irritable after all.

“I do not know what you suppose your business is here,” she says. “Especially as it is almost an hour past ten.”

Holden shrugs.

“Do not shrug at me.”

Holden opens her mouth as if to speak, then casts a glance behind her. There’s no one in the darkened hallway; Father is in his office. Still, Holden waits for Kay to shut her bedroom door.

“I know I’m late,” she says, slouching back against it. “Sorry. I lost track of time in the bookstore.”

Kay blinks. “You are late to see me because you went to the bookstore,” she intones.

She says nothing as Holden withdraws the books from under her arm and extends them. “I really wanted to find Carmilla for you,” she says. “Like, the oldest print version I could find.”

It certainly looks old. Kay purses her lips. “I own Carmilla.”

“I know. But, like… it’s vintage.” Holden attempts one-handed jazz hands. “I have a sentence in my notes app from six months ago that just says carmilla but like the old edition.” She shuffles the stack of books. “And then I sat down for — look, I swear I was trying to be timely about it. Trying to be punctual.” She pops the P. “But time isn’t real and I read two chapters of Pride and Prejudice and I don’t know if you own that but it feels like the kind of thing you’d find sexy.” Her smile glitters. “And then — I know The Catcher in the Rye isn’t your thing. But I wrote in this one, so.”

Kay reaches out, very carefully, to take the books. She does own Pride and Prejudice, actually, but she still feels a pang. She flips through The Catcher in the Rye and is met with scrawls of black-ink handwriting, filling up the margins and underlining passages.

“Thank you,” she says, very softly, and moves to set the books on her desk. “You didn’t have to… get me anything.”

“I like knowing that my parents’ money is fueling homosexual agendas,” Holden says pleasantly. When Kay turns around, Holden catches her hand and steps in closer, showing her teeth in a smile. “But I’ll try to be on time from now on.”

“As you should,” Kay says, pulling Holden a few inches closer.

Holden raises a hand to caress Kay’s cheek. “That said,” she says in a low voice, “now that I’ve — what did you say. Now that I’ve fulfilled my business here, I can think of a few things we could do. Unless it’s too late.”

Against her will, Kay smiles.

“I suppose we can extend your stay a little longer,” she says, and their lips meet.

#max.txt #max actually writes #yves tag #love h tag #holden hemlock #apparently i only write kaypov. i'll admit atlas's pov intimidates me a little bit.#but i do maintain my choice of holden/kay versus holden/atlas because holden and atlas are like... the same. doubles #well not really doubles but like... i think the furthest they would get would be holden asking atlas to swap clothing items.#in a nonsexual very literal way.#anyway! enjoy.

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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The Owl House: Enchanting Grom Fright: Happy Valentine’s Gays

Happy Valentine’s Day owl ladies, gentleman and non-binary folks! It’s time to finish off this holiday in proper style with a LONG overdue review of enchanting Grom Fright and even longer overdue coverage of the Owl House. The Owl House was one of the best debuts of last year if not THE best, only in contention because Close Enough also started last year and looks to surpass regular show in terms of quality. But with stunning animation, tons of representation, and colossal worldbuilding. And given how i’m on record for thinking Star Vs went so far down the tubes they bumped into where Cthulu is sleeping, it’s nice to have another magic based show that seems to be on the right track: carefully building i’ts world, supporting cast and for today’s topic main romance. It also rather than just obliquely hint one character was bi and the other pan, actually goes out of it’s way to have a bisexual protaginst with a gay love intrest. As my good friend @jess-the-vampire has brought up quite a bit, star had plnety of options. .but no willingness to actually campaign for any queer rep, the way Gravity Falls head Alex Hirsch tried to, he still gets credit for trying, and Owl House creator Dana Terrace gets full credit for.

Terrace got her start working on Gravity Falls in line production before working her way up to directing for ducktales, being instrumental in how Webby was animated and how she moves and acts, and being the director for several classic season one episodes including “Woo-Hoo!”, “The Spear of Selene” , “Day of the Only Child!” which was one of my faviorites from season 1 and “The Beagle Birthday Massacre!”. And while I can’t 100% confirm she’s the only part responsible for starting Weblena, given she was director on an episode where a lot of the romantic subtext was in the visuals, she certainly helped so thank you Dana. Thank you a lot. Their adorable. Point is she’s a talented lady and wasn’t satisfied with directing, so she pitched her own show, combining tons of ides and stuff including of all things, Pokemon Red. I checked the article wikipedia had sourced, it was one of her happy childhood memories as it was one of the last things her dad gave her. Awwwwwww. That’s as sweet as it is painful. She’s also currently dating Alex Hirsch, something I was entirely unaware of but find also adorable. Point is i’m glad I looked into her as she’s a very nice person, and very much my kind of weirdo and i’m happy for her sucess and her singuarly weird show that sprung from that sucess.

Now that part of it’s out of the way the episode itself was an uphill battle as you’d expect. As anyone familiar with this blog is aware, but just in case your new, you tend to hear me bitching about Disney’s handling of queer represntation a LOT

For the most part Disney’s pretty bad at it: There was the string of “FIRST GAY CHARACTER IN AN X” they had going for a while.. that consisted of a character I dind’t realize was gay, a kiss I didn’t see, and a talk with a character who I honestly wouldn’t of been looking for had disney not patted themselves on the back with some giant sized hands because htey saved some pym particles for that occasion. Ducktales was unable to have Penumbra come out as gay more clearly because I don’t know Ducks can’t be day.. but they can be IMPLIED to be gay or pansexual as hard as the crew possibly can so they win anyway. Pixar was able to have a gay lead character for one of it’s sparks shorts out and even focused on him coming out of the closet and it’s very good and something I WILL give Pixar credit for... but not Disney Plus who go out of their way to not mention the lead being gay.. despite the fact the short opens with a gay space cat riding a gay space dog out of a rainbow and then it being revaled our lead is in a relationship not long into the short. My point is the idiots who won’t watch this for having gay characters are just going to turn it off, who cares what they think, why are you like this Disney. They need to do better, and be better and i’m getting tired of this shit.

That being said... this episode is a step in the right directoin as despite having to get past one obstructive asshole, not her words but damn if it isn’t the truth, as the rest of hte execs were fine with having a gay character, Terrace fought hard for it and WON, having a clearly gay character, and a clear road to a gay romace as the lead one, all because she wanted some representation in her works. So to honor this, I present this review in honor of love, effort and saying screw you to not having represntation because money. Join me under the cut and allt hat.

We open in the owl house, in the owl house, duck dodge push and shove, it’s how we show our love in the.. you get the point. Luz is learning yet another Rune, this time plant runes.. and already something I love about the series pops up: the fact Luz’s rise in skill is gradual but noticable. Each spell noticably improves in potency with time, going from simple lights to shaping them into simple constructs, and learning to control or time her spells and glpyhs so they launch she she says so, with each one getting more powerful the more she learns. And on top of that osmething I just noticed on rewatch of this episode is her tecnique in finding them evolved, something I dind’t notice the first time because I hadn’t fully caught up and checked this one out to see if Disney would actually let them go through with it.. and they did. Point is her first spell is found by accident, her second by realizing how her magic works fundemntally, both require skilled deduction and on the fly thinking and casting, so she’s already pretty skilled.. but now sh’es ACTIVELY seeking out a new spell here for the first time. She knows how she gets them, she knows each school is tied to a form, and she likely got the plant from williow since that’s her thing and she’s a saint. A demon but also a saint. They can have those too. It’s what I assume relicor is.

I miss that goblin demon bat man. Point is it shows an evolution in Luz’s thinking: while it’s a subtle thing she took a more proactive approach this time even if it took a lot of practice.. and it pay soff as by the time of her next rune, while it’s once again sorta handed to her she has less time to learn it, almost none, and finds it singed onto a ball.. and learns it effortlessly to the point where by the next episode it’s a crucial plot point. IT’s subtle but clever character progression, and stuff I really enjoy, showing our hero going from a bit inept but not helpless or incomptient.. to a force to be reckconed with and far more clever and strategic than yo’ud expect given her sometimes reckless and almost always happy go lucky attitude.

Luz worries teaching King about the internet was a bad idea because he gets excited about a literal cat fight which .. yeah... it was a bad idea but not because of that.. but because next he finds someone saying the earth is flat and she wisely yanks it away. It’s.. very sad that the absolutley maddening and easily debunked flat earth theory is still RELATIVLEY more sane than the stuff we’ve had pop up during the trump era and the cornoavirus pandemic.

But one of the main conlficts of the episode pops up as Luz’s mom messages her and Luz can’t bring herself to tell her anything and just sends a thumbs up. I do think this episode helps even things from the pilot a bit as it was a bit lopsided: While I got that Camillia was genuinely struggling with how to deal with Luz, and was offered an out and had to take it... the fact she sees NO problem with the normalcy camp, which comes off intentioanlly or not a sa parallel to conversion camps or camps to make autistic kids “Normal”. And as someone whose both bisexual and autistic, I naturally relate to luz way more as someone whose intrests sometimes just don’t quite fit with everyone else, and who dosen’t get how bad some of their actions were. THat’s why this episode feels like a necessary course correction: Luz is shown to genuinely love her mama and feel guilty.. but we see camilia genuinlely loves and supports her daughter a bit more. While it was clear from the pilot this shows it more, with her genuinely just wanting to know her daughter’s okay and checking up on her, and giving me the feeling that possible consequences or no if something bad WAS happening or she didn’t hear from her for a long time, she would’ve drove up there to get her. It feels like the writers realized the implications they accidently created and wanted to fix it, though I can’t say for certain. But if so good on you for course correcting, not every show does that.

But King encourages her, telling her she’s doing the right thing by lying and to “trust the demon on your shoulder”. Keep this in mind for later, but that joke is great on it’s own. But soon i’ts time for school and Hooty.. barfs out Luz’s books for her.

I haven’t been this disturbed since.. (Looks at the clock) About 2 maybe three hours ago when I watched a man have, if apparently shorter than the oriiginal cut as I wanted to see everyone else’s reactions dammit, sex with hiis car which was possesed by the mad ghost of his dead wife. Because that’s the kind of stuff i’m into when i’m not reviewing stuff. And before that Tinky.. just everything about tinky.

I do not have enough time to get into TInky here or why he exestially horrifies me. Or why Jeff blim is a living god. I will save that for a proper review if I have the time tomorrow. Point is I saw a lot today and that still tops it. Willow and Gus are likewise grossed out and want to leave.

Cut to school where Luz wonders what’s with all the decorations.. that remind me of this honestly

And frankly given the whole state of the boiling isles it REALLY wouldn’t surprise me if the decorations were indeed well cooked faces. But i’ts Grom time, which means elaborate gromposals (Some Dude asks Skara out with a beating heart and an elaborate medical proposal.. which.. points for effort. And for using an actual heart. Couldn’t get one for mine. ), dancing and someone being chosen for Grom Queen. WHich Willow hints isn’t as nice as that sounds. Before we can get into that though Amity bumps into them and gets into a tizzy before meekly greeting “Luz.. and Co”. which.. not going to lie.. is my faviorite gag of the season. Just htw way she adds them and just the way Willow and Guz both smile widely at it as if to say “That’s us!”. Amity drops a note and snatches it back. This will be important later, you all know why, point is Amity becomes Grom Queen.. and is heavily depressed with Luz following her to find out why. At the gym.. she does indeed ifnd out why: Turns out Grom is not some mutation of an earthname but is based around a horrifying entity lurking beneath the isles, Gromethious the Fear Bringer, who emerges from his slumber once a year and must be fought back and brings out his target’s greatest fears. Just like groundhog day only with less time loops and rodent abuse. Amity is scared of hers, and i’ll obviously get into this more later, and Luz simply suggests asking bump to opt out and Amity appricates the support. Awwww.

Luz heads home and we find out Eda is chaperoning and King is mcing. Eda is also rocking a suit. Just damn girl, damn. But Luz considers taking her place.. and gets laughed at, with Eda assuming she’ll have to save her and King just being kind of a dick. I mean he’s a loveable thoroughly cuddly dick but he’s still a dick... just more like a stuffed plushie of one. So basically exactly like Tinky. Look I mention him more than once in this review he dosen’t put me in the bastard box. It’s a great system. Naturally this makes Luz more determined than ever to prove herself and she finds Amity in the night, with Amity having been unable to get out of it.. and Bumps a resonable guy, he just wants a substitute and no one wants the job.. except Luz who galdly volunteers and insists ntohing scares her before the giant spider on the back of her head proves otherwise. Because of course it does, spiders are fucking terrifying. Kill then all.. except the pokemon ones. Galvaltula are sweethearts. As are Ariadoses. Sweethearts who can elctorcute or poison you but still.

So the next way Luz begins preparing.. and by that I mean it’s time for training. Sadly we don’t get an episode of Luz and Amity getting trapped in an 80′s fashion montage... I mean yes Rise of the TMNT also did that plot the same year, but we had two diffrent plots about someone getting trapped in an eldtrich sitcom and a THIRD this year, all entertaingly unique. Though we do get Luz pulling out an otter suit that’s adorable and she sadly still hasn’t worn yet. “This one says i’m an otter, with a dark side”. She also got thrown out of a school dance for.. wearing an otter suit. Okay the other things we saw in the pilot were understandable but htis is just.. baffling. Who cares what you wear to a dance as long as it isn’t horribly racist of nothing at all.

Damn you flanders and your glorious ass. Point is Amity shows up and threatens hooty’s life because.. he’s hooty. The fact he isn’t dead already is a testiment to how badass he is and how much money he’d cost Eda to replace. Owl Tubes don’t come out of a stygian hole in the unvierse every day you know. That’s only every three years. It’s basic styigan owl tube science.

But Amity wants her to be ready and that she’ll have to face her greatest fear.. and cue hooty popping up, poking amity in the face and asking if she wants to know her greatest fear. Really he can clearly hear everything in the house given he heard that, so he heard the death threat he just chose to ignore it. That.. was a mistake. And by mistake I mean we get a hilarious cut to the outside of the house as Luz tries to stop her love intrest from murdering her second mom’s tube monster. The result is some bandages and an eyepatch. To be fair that last one was just flaring up from a previous beating.

For this solem task of training, Amity has brought in her local disaster bisexuals.. aka her twin siblgins Eldric and Elmyra, whose greatest fears are dying alone and being stuck with Eldric. Both understandable. They conjur luz’s greatest fears which are.. some of the funniest shit I heard all year.. and also very relatable. Human souls in cat bodies, which is genuinely terrifying good job Luz, Jerks on the internet who mansplain things, relatable, and soy milk.

But Amity knows this is just the openign act. it needs to be something deeper.. so while Luz dosen’t realize it’s probably her mom issues she brings up her issues with her other mom: that Eda dosen’t think she can do this. Hence we get a giant eda putting Luz in a babychair. Before we can unpack how wrong that sentence sounded, Eda comes out, and marvels at how hot giant her is. But she’s quickly distracted from sex with a giant version of herself, which is not an easy feat, by the relization “Wait Luz is going to fight grom isn’t she.. fuck i’m going to have to save her”, though Luz holds firm on doing it to prove she’s fine and dosen’t need to be saved constantly. it’s a good conflict. Eda IS right that Luz is not ready for this alone, that she’s overcompensating and that Eda would, in normal circumstances be the one to rescue her. As we’ll see it’s not her who does it but still, were this any other foe she probably would be. But Luz’s motivations are equally understandable: She wants to help her friend not have to do this and she wants to prove she can do it. She just wants her mentor, the only person in her life up to meeting her that GNEUINELY supported her in magic to respect her. To have faith in her and actually see how far she’s come. And given how her own mother writes off her dreams, if not unrealistically, and before this she had no friends or support system to speak of outside her mom, it’s easy to see why this is so improtant to Luz: she just wants to make the one person in her life whose ever support her actually think it was worth it when in truth Eda already thinks it does and just dosen’t want her to die.

She’s just not good with talking to her or not condescending to her as her own ego is stacked sky high, probably because the whole curse thing meant Eda was an outcast by default and the system wants to either chain her to one form of magic and one only or shackle her to them as a hired goon. Her ego, while justified, is also a defense mechanism: a way to shield herself from the fact almost no one cares about her and one of the few people who DOES, dosen’t care what she wants or needs. Once the curse happened she lost just about everything and had to rebuild and thus build up walls around herself and kept everyone else at arms length till Luz changed her for the better. It’s just a tragic clash of two wills both with similar problems but both unwilling to talk about them.

But with time up, our heroes need to get to the diggity dance. So they indeed do and we get some fun sight gags, Willow makes corsages, that one girl with the cresent head somehow ended up with Mathomule and is not happy, as anyone who ends up with him should. And it’s time for Luz to face her destiny.. in a tux with a tutu because of course, and Amity likes it because also of course.

IT’s time to rumble, with King getting nervous due to eda’s prodding about mcing since his co-mc gus is really good at it, and introducing our champion.

No wait sorry he’s still trapped in Mojoworld. no it’s still Luz who shows off a seasons worth of skill by easily dispatching the first few fears and saying to grom let’s finish it.. before grom puts a tentacle on her head.

It’s to downlaod her fear.. which is Camillia. Granted we could all see it coming but still Luz obviously can’t fight her own mother or her own overwhelming guilt.. her mom did hurt her.. but she gets why and just loves her and wants her to be proud but dosen’t know what to do: tell her the trutha nd possibly loose a happy and fufilling life or wait until it all blows up. It’s a painful choice. So luz and king end up running. King runs first because he can’t handle it and Gus talks him back into the groove while Luz runs away because she can’t fight her own mom, understandable, and Gus encourages king to lead the crowd which he does. Amity and Eda follow Luz.

So Luz is backed down, facing down a monster tha’ts going to go on to everyone else next if she fails... and Eda prepares to interfere.. but it’s AMITY who faces her fear and dives in. And we find out just what her fear was as grom turns into a humanoid shape and rips the letter in half.. it was a grom invitation. Though conviently the who it’s adressed to was ripped out.

And yeah not going to save this one: It’s Luz. You know it I know it I didn’t even hide it in the intro. Even before the reveal in a bit it was obvious. But it also makes perfect sense. I’ve avoided talking about her character arc up to this point because I was waiting for now. Amity’s growth is the third major arc of the season behind Luz’s slow learning of magic and eventually induction into hexside and eda’s curse, which I lump in with Lilith chasing her since both were mildly entertwined and then entirely are once the reveal hits in the finale. When we meet her she’s an outright bully.. but we slowly see there’s more there. That she’s not really HAPPY or content, is contstantly under pressure by her family name, is outright bullied by her own siblings who don’t understand her. So Luz coming in, seemingly only being intrested in magic because i’ts neat.. understandably bothers her. She’s not a great person, bullying her old best friend because tha’ts what’s expected and being close with outright bullies because of that.. but it’s through Luz she starts to grow, realizing Luz is genuinely nice and genuinely sorry for any trouble she caused Amity, and evne then both cases were causaed by Amity’s own dickishness and outside forces, so it’s easy to see why she defrosts faster. Her siblings realize they’ve genuinely hurt her, and actually try to be good siblings from then on and help her, and slowly Amity learns to truth luz, trust in her, and accept her... and thus accept her feelings for her. There are gradual hints she’s growing attracted to her.. but her walls had to come down first, and it wouldn’t of worked from the outset. The show cleverly has the two build a genuine friendship, two opposities who work well together, so when feelings do happen it feels natural. It’s not “I’m in love with this person because I have to because you can’t be friends with someone your attracted to” bullshit or anything like that, cough star vs cough, it’s just well built catching feelings. I’ts how this kind of thing SHOULD go: niether went in intending for this to happen.. it’s just happening.

And Amity’s reluctance is painfully understandable, as Luz is the ONLY friend and support she has. Sure she and willow are patching things up, but WIllow would understandably choose luz over her and she’s terrified of loosing the one good thing in her life. Of course Luz would either say yes, and probably will some day, or let her down gently, she’s nice.. but it’s also understandable to be afraid that someone won’t take the reveal well. I’ve been there trust me, it’s easier when you let it out even if you get rejected, but I get it being hard to let out because you don’t want to loose a friend. I did not, and niether would she, but I can see why she wouldn’t want ot take the plunge. At least not yet. We’ll see this summer hopefully.

But we do get a shiptastic, gorgeously aniamted scene of the two dancing an fightin gin perfect synch, combinging luz’s new use of plant magic with amity’s mastery of abominations resulting in the two utterly decimating grom, likely in part because with two fast moving targets he can’t get a lock on and likely nees more fear and mass to attack multiple targets at once. Or just more tendrils. it’s a quick, beautful sequence that’s utterly glorious, being framed as romantic as any hetero scene of the type and rightfully so. A triumph and well deserving of this praise.

Our heros have won, get crowns, and King gets praise. All is well.. except Luz drops the crown once she gets home because she feels like she failed and feels lost about her mom.. though at least king gets it “I’m king and queen, best of both things!”. You tell em sister.

So we end with Luz genuinely responding to her mom, with some montage stuff as we see Gus and Willow poke a fear blob, willow fears bugs, understandable and Gus fears clowns...

Also understandable. Though I didn’t put up a bug picture because

And Amity looks out folornly into the night. Camilla responds to Luz.. and mentions letters.. which while Luz brushes those off.. we see someone sent them. And by someone I probably mean king since we now know only eda and him had acess to the portal, and given he was actively encouraging her to lie.. yeah i’m supscious. But we’ll see next season. For now this episode is fan fucking tastic, showing off tons of character development, being representative and sweet as all hell.. and being really funny. Tons of great gags in this one including the turtle guy from an earlier episode being forced to be adisco ball. This is easily the series best so far and if you haven’t checked it out, please do it’s fantastic as is this show. Check both out. Until the next rainbow i’ts been a pleasure. Tommorow more disney shenanigans this time with pete. And also more of this possibly we’ll see what I get done.

Goodnight everybody!

#the owl house #lumity #luz noceda #amity blight #willow park #gus #eda clawthrone #king #principal bump #grometheious #enchanting grom fright #lbgtq+#disney #disney plus

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otterskin · 3 years

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Inverted Mobius, Mr. Tesseract and The Avatar of Truth

The mystery of the weird collar has deepened, thanks to @nebulousfishgills - by which I mean they totally solved it.

To those just joining me, I noticed this in my previous breakdown of the Loki trailer here.

Mr. Mobius, played by Owen Wilson, has an ‘inverted suit’. His collar is an indentation in his suit, rather than going on top of it.

So, first, a scene from Endgame that I seriously did think of when we learned there was a character called ‘Mobius M. Mobius’ in Loki (played by Owen Wilson). And yet I didn’t put this together. Thanks again to nebulousfish for making me realize that these things might not be coincidences.

When Mr. Stark is inventing time travel, he asks his AI to create a depiction of a Mobius Strip, inverted.

Which gets him this:

Anyway, what is a Mobius Strip, and who is Mobius M. Mobius? (Not to be confused with Morbius the Living Vampire, though wouldn’t it be funny if he was mistaken for Mobius M. if this show gets big first?)

I am not a quantum theorist or comic book aficionado by trade, so let’s do a Wikipedia-Fu on it.

In mathematics, a Möbius strip, band, or loop (US: /ˈmoʊbiəs, ˈmeɪ-/ MOH-bee-əs, MAY-, UK: /ˈmɜːbiəs/;[1]German: [ˈmøːbi̯ʊs]), also spelled Mobius or Moebius, is a surface with only one side (when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space) and only one boundary curve. The Möbius strip is the simplest non-orientable surface.

An example of a Möbius strip can be created by taking a strip of paper and giving one end a half-twist, then joining the ends to form a loop; its boundary is a simple closed curve which can be traced by a single unknotted string. Any topological space homeomorphic to this example is also called a Möbius strip, allowing for a very wide variety of geometric realizations as surfaces with a definite size and shape. For example, any rectangle can be glued left-edge to right-edge with a reversal of orientation. Some, but not all, of these can be smoothly modeled as surfaces in Euclidean space. A closely related, but not homeomorphic, surface is the complete open Möbius band, a boundaryless surface in which the width of the strip is extended infinitely to become a Euclidean line.A half-twist clockwise gives an embedding of the Möbius strip which cannot be moved or stretched to give the half-twist counterclockwise; thus, a Möbius strip embedded in Euclidean space is a chiral object with right- or left-handedness. The Möbius strip can also be embedded by twisting the strip any odd number of times, or by knotting and twisting the strip before joining its ends.

A Möbius strip does not self-intersect but its projection in 2 dimensions does.

Uh....right. Well, that clears everything up, doesn’t it?

Let’s crib off someone else’s work. Thanks to Thomas Wong on Medium, I was able to understand this a little better.

A Möbius strip is just a strip of paper, turned and taped together. It it only has one side, so an ant walking along the strip eventually returns to where he started. If we metaphorically interpret the ant, not as returning to a point in space, but a point in time, then it alludes to time travel.

...

As previously discussed, after a measurement, the quantum mixture (half born and half never born) becomes a definite state (born or never born). Finding the “spectral decomposition” is to find all the possible energies (eigenvalues) and states. Using these, one can determine how a quantum object evolves with time.

Combining this with the metaphoric interpretation of the Möbius strip, it could be that Stark found how to make quantum objects evolve such that they revisit a point in time, hence time travel.

Okay, that’s a little easier to understand. So how does this relate to the character Mobius M. Mobius, aside from him being named after the strip and the (apparently antiquated) ideas about time travel?

Well, he was based on Marvel Comics Legend Mark Gruenwald, a guy known for his passion for the lore of the comics, which he knew in innate detail. He even wrote the Official Handbooks and whatnot. Likewise, Mr. Mobius is a stickler for detail and one of the few members of the TVA even allowed a face - although it is off the rack, as he’s one an infinite number of clones (god I love the TVA so much already, it’s heaven for a Douglas Addams fan like me).

Despite being a clone, he rose through the ranks and is nearly the top guy, serving only underneath Mr. Alternity (and I am not familiar with these comics so feel free to correct me). Mr. Alternity has almost no comics history, but is based on editor Tom Brevoort.

There are several other misters, all of them near-identical to ‘Moby’. Mr. Orobourous, Mr. Paradox, Mr. Tesseract (!) and Mr. Oburos. They are also minor characters, but let’s look at all these names.

Clearly they are named after quantum theories of some-sort or another.

Mr. Mobius: Mobius Strip Theory - the idea that, essentially, is about the shape of time itself and the theory of traveling along that shape.

Mr. Alternity : Alternative universes

Mr. Ouroboros: A divine figure representing the beginning and the end of time in an endless cycle of death and rebirth.

Mr. Oburos - I’m not sure, but I think this is a variant of Ouroboros.

Mr. Paradox - Temporal paradox, causal loops - ex. The Grandfather Paradox

Mr. Tesseract - An object that exists in 4 dimensions. Time is often called the fourth dimension.

Obviously that last one is interesting, considering how the Tesseract will be the start of our adventure. The Cosmic Cube was renamed for the MCU, and in the comics has no relation to this minor character.

But what if it now does?

What if Tony has caused a change in the very appearance of Mr. Mobius when he inverted the Mobius Strip - literally inverting his clothing because he changed the shape of the Mobius - does that mean that these seemingly human-looking misters are in fact some sort of avatars for aspects of time itself? And if Mr. Tesseract is representative of how space and time intersect in the fourth dimension, wouldn’t a rogue god twisting space and time with the device that shares his name cause him some affect? Perhaps why the TVA noticed something was amiss to begin with.

This would be a departure from the comics, but the characters have almost no history there. They are ripe for new ideas.

Or, then again, since Loki will be working for the TVA - perhaps he’s the one who becomes ‘Mr. Tesseract’?

But continuing with that ‘Avatar of Aspects’ idea, let’s get away from this sausagefest for a second and visit my next newest favourite character -

I’m guessing she’s one of the Justices of the TVA. What gives it away? The imperious look, the giant oaken table, or the fact that I’m suddenly self-conscious when she looks at me? It’s the last one, of course. She’s a natural judge.

Of the named TVA judges, there’s :

Justice Goodwill, Justice Hope, Justice Liberty, Justice Love, Justice Might, Justice Mills, Justice Peace and Justice Truth.

Could they also possibly be avatars of their respective aspects?

If I had to guess, I’d say this is Justice Truth, as pairing up Loki with an avatar of Truth seems like it’d be a smashing good time, similar to how he was paired with Verity Willis in the comics. She might even be a composite character with Verity.

Verity’s power is detecting and seeing through all lies and illusions. I think this powerset will be given to Justice Truth, except instead of deriving it from a magic ring that she swallowed, she’d simply be the actual ‘Embodiment of Truth’ - and let’s get real here, when I said ‘Avatars of Aspects’, I was using that clunky phrase because the more obvious one - God of - is already ‘taken’. So Justice Truth may well be the ‘God of Truth’, as it were.

I think she’ll end up in something of a buddy-comedy with Loki, giving him someone to bounce off against who literally cuts through his carefully crafted veneer.

I’m reminded of a great quote from Taika Waititi when he was talking about what he wanted to do with Loki in Ragnarok:

“(He’s) someone who tries so hard to embody this idea of the tortured artist, this tortured, gothy orphan...It’s too tiring trying to be like that,” he says. “And, most humans, we get over ourselves, we get to that point where we’re like, ‘man, being a tortured artist is actually, like, a lot of work. Maybe I should just be real and present, and just be me, and I don’t have to be a tortured artist to be interesting, I can just be a f*cking weird New Zealander and that’s enough.”

...I think Taika is a living Loki, tbh, ha ha. No wonder he gets it.

Waititi, Yost, Pearson and Kyle did great work to cut through Loki’s illusions, both with dialogue and the visual allegory of his projections being dispelled by handy thrown objects, culminating in the very sweet ‘I’m here,’ scene at the end of the film. Loki seems to be much more open and expressive at the end of that film, and it seems like a weight has lifted off his shoulders.

But while this new Loki (Loki 2.0? Loki’s Show’s Loki? Loki II? Lokii? Lokii.) is shown a clip show of Ragnarok (one I previously theorized will be deliberately incomplete), that’s quite different from actually experiencing it, and he’ll be as performative as he was in Avengers and Thor 2. Instead of processing that ‘lack of presence’ as he did in Ragnarok, which came about as a result of Thor finally seeing through Loki’s illusions (guess he doesn’t fall for it anymore) as a result of their long history together, I suspect the band-aid will be torn off much more harshly by a total stranger who nonetheless simply sees through him.

Loki in general has a bad relationship with the truth (see the famous Vault Confrontation scene), and literally putting him on trial before the Truth Herself would certainly be enough to get him to switch from this phony expression:

To this one:

That’s not much of a facade there.

It’s not the same character arc as Ragnarok, but it does get us to a similar place, albeit in a darker and less healing way for Loki. I mean Lokii.

Anyhow. That’s what I got out of this thing.

#tva #loki #mobius #mobius m mobius #mobius strip #THE COLLAR #trailer #anaylsis #theory #loki trailer theory #justice truth #verity willis #loki trailer #loki trailer analysis #lokii

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kiarcheo · 3 years

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A Whole New World 2/10

Jane and Kat find out there is more to each other…and to the new world they have found themselves in.

Read on Ao3 too

AN: I have seen Anne’s date of birth ranging from 1501 to 1507, and Jane’s between 1504 and 1509. For the sake of this story I consider Anne born in 1501 and consequently dying at 35, and Jane being born in 1508 and dying at 28.

Kat came back at 18 and Jane at 22, Anna, Cathy and Anne in their late twenties, and Catalina in her early thirties.

——————————————–

It becomes a regular thing. Sometimes it’s a museum Kat has already visited, sometimes a new one on the list she keeps of places she wants to see. They often make a day of it, treating themselves to lunch (usually at Jane’s initiative, since Kat tends to forego eating in favour of whatever has caught her interest), exploring parts of the city unknown to them.

One evening, close to dusk, they are walking through an empty park when Kat stops. ‘Have you ever wanted to try them out?’

‘Try what?’ Jane follows the direction of Kat’s gaze. ‘That?’

‘They look like fun.’

‘They are for children.’

‘Who said that? Besides, there are no children around...’ Kat trails off, eyebrow raised waiting for a response.

‘You know what? Why not?’

Kat lets out a small squeal before grabbing Jane’s hand and dragging her towards the playground.

‘Remember when you said “who said that they are just for children”?’ Jane asks as they are sitting on the platform, feet dangling down, recovering their breath and cooling down.

‘You mean, like, half an hour ago?’

‘Smartass.’ Jane gives her a look, before pointing to a sign. ‘Children’s Play Area. Only children under the age of 12 may use this play area.’

‘Well, technically we haven’t been back for that long?’

Jane shakes her head amused. Kat is so cheeky and she would have never guessed before spending so much time with her.

‘So what was your favourite part?’ she asks after a bout of silence. That is another thing that changed. Before, silent moments were much more common and awkward, now their quiet spells are rarer and yet infinitely more comfortable.

‘You falling off those.’ Kat motions with her head towards the monkey bars, getting a glare in response. ‘What about yours?’

‘The slides, I’d say.’

‘Yeah, they are nice. But too short, don’t you think?’

‘I know, right? By the time you pick up speed, you’re already at the end,’ Jane agrees. ‘They should make them longer. Adult-sized.’

‘Wait!’ Kat whips out her phone. ‘Let me...’

And Jane lets her. She has learnt that Kat's curiosity is insatiable. If she stumbles upon something she doesn’t know or doesn’t understand…she has to look it up. So many times, when their fellow queens mention (usually complain, actually) that Kat is always glued to her phone, Jane has been tempted to tell them that most of the time she is learning something new...but if Kat had not told them – not even if she would probably spare herself their scolding – then it’s not her place to tell them.

‘They exist!’ Kat exclaims angling the screen towards Jane. ‘Look! They even have playgrounds for adults!’

They look together at the photos for a while before Kat taps on a Wikipedia link, her first port of call every time. ‘Amusement parks,’ she starts to read the entry aloud before being interrupted by a text notification popping up on the screen.

Kat groans as she reads it.

‘What?’

‘Curfew,’ Kat sighs. ‘Apparently it’s late and they are wondering why I’m not home yet.’ She knows it’s because they care but... ‘Did you get one too?’

Jane checks her phone. ‘No.’

Kat sighs again. ‘One dies young once and she is forever treated like a baby.’ She notices the look Jane is sending her. ‘Please don’t start.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘I can't make a joke that everyone freaks out thinking I’m depressed or having a breakdown or a flashback or something.’

Jane remembers clearly one of those occasions. They had been discussing nightmares and how everyone seemed to have them except Kat, who had commented that perhaps losing her head had meant losing everything that had been inside that too. She also remembers very clearly thinking that the reactions had been a bit disproportionate compared to Kat’s offhand tone and casual demeanour.

‘Sometimes a girl just wants to be self-deprecating. Or joke about her own death without being psychoanalysed and having people wanting to talk about your trauma.’

‘I get it. I said once that I had no time with Edward. I was just...stating a fact. I was not looking for pity or anything. But they tripped over themselves to reassure me that I was still his mother – which of course! – and that I’m still a mother now. And honestly. One has a child once and she is forever just a mother in everyone’s eyes. Don’t get me wrong. I wish I could have seen Edward grow up. Wish I could have been his mother. Properly. But I wasn’t. And out of all of us, I’m the one who had less time with children. Besides you, I was the youngest one to die. So I have no idea why everyone thinks of me as this motherly figure?’

Aware that she has been ranting, Jane chances a look at Kat, who has a peculiar expression on her face.

‘What?’ she asks, feeling self-conscious.

‘I’m just thinking how happy I am that you joined me that day at the museum.’

That had been the true start of their relationship, despite having lived together for many months prior to that.

‘You mean you're happy I caught you sneaking out?’

Jane knows what she means, though. They would have never thought, and even less found, they had so many things in common. Or that they could get along so well and have so much fun together.

‘I was not sneaking out.’

Jane merely looks at her.

‘I thought nobody was home. It was just out of habit.’

‘So all the other times you sneaked out.’

Kat doesn’t reply, knowing Jane is doing it just to annoy her. They had a similar talk the second time they went to a museum together, Jane asking why they were sort of hiding their trip. It was not that Kat thought they would stop her if they knew she was going out. But she just didn’t want to deal with their questions. About where she was going, why, why she was going alone, when she was coming back...Just easier to leave without them knowing and then simply tell them she had been out if they asked having noticed she had not been home. In their defence, they knew better than to pry and as long as she was home safely, they would let it go despite being curious.

‘I know you’re the one in charge of our museum days,’ Jane starts, ‘but I wanted to run an idea by you.’

‘Of course we can go to a museum of your choice. You don’t need to ask permission or whatever.’

‘Wait before agreeing.’

‘Is it the Tower?’ Kat winces with a grimace, trying to think of places still standing that Jane might be wary of asking her to visit.

Jane stops rummaging in her bag, her head shooting up. ‘What the fuck, Katherine??’

The younger girl is so lost in unpleasant memories that she doesn't even react to Jane’s swearing nor her full naming her. ‘Hampton Court?’

‘Why would I ever do something like that?’ Jane recoils. ‘God, no! The Clink.’

‘As-’

‘The prison! Not the-’

‘Brothels?’ Kat completes, eyebrow raised in amusement. Then she nods, almost to herself. The area had been known for two main things…the prison and for allowing usually forbidden activities.

‘Yes. I mean, they made a prison museum. You know I like true crime and–’

Yes. That had been a surprise. When Kat had asked if there was something she particularly enjoyed reading and learning about, like she loved history, that had definitely not been the answer she had expected. Jane must have known that, considering how much she hummed and hawed before caving after Kat had called bullshit – literally – on her non-committal answer.

‘–I think I’d like to– but I don’t want to, like, trigger you?’

‘What’s inside, exactly?’

Jane finally finds what she has been looking for in her bag and hands her a leaflet.

‘You know what?’ Kat takes a look at it. ‘We can go and you can...scout it out?’ She doesn’t see anything upsetting in the pictures, but there will be so much more in the museum that they can show in a single leaflet. ‘You can take a look before me and if you think there is something that might…disturb me, you tell me and I’ll skip that room?’

‘Really?’

‘I mean, you know I'm not too fussed about death and stuff like that as long as it’s not too bloody. Or neck-related.’

She is not too keen on watching documentaries with Jane, but she doesn’t mind listening to her talking about them. Or about whatever serial killer or unsolved crime she is currently reading about.

‘Thank you.’ Jane squeezes her arm, hoping Kat knows it’s not about agreeing to her request, but for her trust. ‘On an unrelated note...food?’

Jane’s constant preoccupation with food is another thing put down to her supposedly maternal instinct, a desire to make sure everyone is well-fed. The truth is…Jane loves eating. Being able to enjoy doing so without the ever-present worry of looking unladylike. Discovering new foods. She doesn’t eat a lot, but she needs to eat often, or she becomes…hangry, it’s what Kat called it. And it is only polite to ask if the others are feeling peckish too and want to join her. Moreover, she knows it’s one thing she can’t rely on Kat for, seeing as she is prone to skip meals if there is anything else she deems more important or interesting.

‘Do you think Catalina would consider this as traditional local food or...?’ Jane wonders aloud as she dips the churro in the plastic pot holding the chocolate sauce.

‘Possibly? Even if they were not invented by Spanish shepherds but brought by the Portuguese from China like some say, I think everyone agrees that by the 16th century they existed in Spain. And look, Romans had fried pastry, so, if not exactly that, something similar. And naturally cacao came to Europe after the Spanish invaded the Americas, so it arrived in Spain first, although if it was just after Cortés, Catalina would have been already in England…so she might have never tried churros with chocolate? Not sure when they started to combine the two, to be honest…’ Kat trails off. ‘What?’

‘Next person who says you’re stupid, I’ll deck them.’

Kat chuckles, bumping her hip into hers. ‘I appreciate the offer.’

‘It’s not an offer, it’s a promise.’

‘Ever thought about getting a car?’ Jane asks after they have been walking for a while.

‘Why? Tired? But not really. Honestly just the idea of getting into one and driving it myself is kind of terrifying.’

Jane nods. It sounds a bit like airplanes for her. It still boggles her mind that humans can fly. And she knows they are mostly safe and all, but it doesn’t mean she is keen on trying them out for herself.

‘I thought about getting a bicycle and learning how to ride,’ Kat continues.

‘Why don’t you?’

‘Yeah, and where would I hide it?’

‘Why would you need to hide it?’ Jane is puzzled enough to ignore Kat’s tone verging on the sarcastic rhetorical question inflection that usually implies someone had just asked a very stupid question.

‘With the potential of me getting hurt? Straying away, getting lost, or whatever? I don’t know if you have noticed, but the others tend to be a bit overprotective.’

And a bit is a euphemism. Don’t get her wrong. It is nice to have people caring and worrying about her. But she spent a lifetime fending for herself. And yes, she had her struggles, and the end might have been inglorious, but Anne wound up the same way and yet nobody questions her…or her capabilities. And okay, that might have something to do with age, but nobody cared about that before, and she had been a bloody queen (and quite a successful one, if she says so herself, at least before her past caught up with her)! Still, she doesn’t want to think how worse it would be if she had come back younger than she had been at the time of her death like the others did.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Jane asks, realising she is miles away, lost in thoughts.

‘How weird it would be if we had come back the same age we died. Well, besides me, obviously.’ She hopes she’ll be there to see it in person, but she can’t really think about Catalina as a 50-years-old woman or Anna in her forties. ‘And about how there is a fine line between heart-warming care and overbearing concern.’

Because, back to the point, she might have been more or less successful, but she is used to rely just on herself and getting by, not to have four other women, Jane to a lesser extent, being overly concerned about her. For certain matters, at least. Because for other things they seem perfectly happy to…perhaps not ignore her, but surely leave her to her own devices, without trying to get her involved. And she is often more than content with it, she will admit that…except that often it also leads to remarks about how she spends all her time at home, always in front a screen, and perhaps she should go out more? And then instead of standing up all night on her phone, she would tire herself out and sleep?

‘So you don’t want to check this out?’

Kat had not even realised they were walking past a sporting goods store.

‘Look! You could easily hide that.’ Jane points out to a small, colourful, tricycle, clearly meant for children.

‘Ah ah. Very funny.’ Sarcasm is heavy in Kat’s voice, but she follows her in.

‘What about this?’

‘A unicycle? Really? Have you ever seen one of those around, in public?’

Jane takes a moment to think about it. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘Exactly. Because they belong in the circus.’

‘One might say our house is a circus.’ They certainly have some chaotic days.

‘And you a clown.’

Jane gasps in mock offence. ‘I miss the days when you were afraid of me.’

‘I was never afraid of you. I was indifferent. And thought you were a stuck-up bore. Also, I know you don’t miss it.’

‘True,’ Jane admits easily. ‘Joking aside. We could put them in the shed?’

She had said once that she didn’t mind taking care of the garden and suddenly she had been left in charge of it, gardening apparently a passion of hers she didn’t even know she had. She supposes that it was deemed an appropriate hobby for boring old plain Jane (and yes, the fact that it is her actual name and not just a phrase in her case does not escape her), just like embroidery. She enjoys both of them, sure, but she is fairly confident the others think that’s all she does, no other interests – oh wait, there is cooking, or at least making sure that everyone is eating too! – which is something she tries not to dwell on too much because that’s frankly a bit (or a lot, depending on how she feels on the day) insulting.

‘We? Them?’ Kat raises an eyebrow. ‘But yes, we could store them there, but not really hide them if anyone happens to look inside. And certainly not two of them.’

Still, they continue to peruse the store.

‘What about these?’ Jane calls Kat’s attention, holding a pair of rollerblades up. ‘I’ve seen kids with them, can’t be that hard, can it?’ she continues once the girl comes over, looking interested.

‘Shoes on wheels? We’re so gonna die.’

Jane starts to put them back, slightly dejected, but Kat snatches them up. ‘Let’s do this.’

‘Yeah?’ She looks at her, tentative grin on her face.

Kat nods with gleeful smile. ‘Absolutely.’

#six the musical fanfiction #six the musical #jane and kat #six fanfiction #fic: a whole new world #six fanfic #six the musical fanfic #mywork #six jane seymour #six katherine howard #six fic #six the musical fic #my ideas #six writing #my six posts #sixfic #my posts

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windstormwielding · 3 years

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How did you come up with Kotaro's zanpakuto? (i really love the bird theme of his attacks!) did you go through a lot of changes when coming up with names, abilities, and the general concept?

{ ooc } bUCKLE UP KIDDOS ‘CAUSE IT’S TIME FOR SOME LONG OVERDUE GODDAMNED KŌTA META-

Kōta’s zanpakutō was essentially conceived out of my own love for great big storms and heavy winds – and yes, I have a story to go with that! On one occasion many years ago, I hopped on a bus to visit a friend in town, but I was ill-prepared in that it was about to rain heavily and I had jack shit but a jacket. No raincoat and not even an umbrella. I thought I would make it there on time, buuuuut evidently, I did not. It already started raining and thundering hard by the time I walked out of the bus and had to walk a few blocks by myself.

And honestly, Plouton, looking back? I would not have changed a single little detail that day. Those several minutes I spent outside at the mercy of a live thunderstorm left such a huge impression on me! The incessant rain keeping me tethered to the ground, the sheer volume of deafening thunder cracking so hard and so loudly that the air around me quaked... pair that with times I’ve enjoyed feeling myself at the mercy of heavy winds, or even the smell of the outside after rain falls...

...pretty much all of that served as the biggest source of inspiration behind the wind and storm-oriented zanpakutō, and I wanted Kōta to embody that himself.

Besides, aside from Senna herself in Memories of Nobody, the Gotei 13 lacked a dedicated air-manipulating shinigami barring Kensei’s unique take on the topic with Tachikaze, and we’ve only seen antagonists use this power (Dordoni of the Arrancar within the main story, Kariya if you want to go filler with the Bounts... whom I’ve honestly forgotten about prior to creating Kōta WHOOPS) in the traditional sense. Not to mention, air as an element is SUPER malleable and there’s so much you can do with it if you get creative?? So, given we’ve got some real powerful element-leaning shinigami already with water (lbr Kaien would’ve been a beast had he not been nixed), fire (Yama), snow (Tosh), and electricity (Sasakibe), why not keep adding to the idea?

With that, we’ve got the main concept locked down. Powers and general theme? Check. Bird-like zanpakutō spirit? Check. Defined attacks? ...noooooot quite there yet—in fact, those were a fairly late addition well after the blog reboot. As for what led to it, this never took off since the other mun blipped on an indefinite hiatus, but our thread would have likely turned into a fight thread between our muses and uh...

...yeah, I realized named techniques are kind of an important thing to have, especially when writing within the context of an action-oriented series like Bleach. It wasn’t just about the cool factor, but having a readily available kit for reference (for myself, my writing partners, and folks reading in) was a must, not to mention it helped better define just what his main friggin’ weapon is capable of like those of most of the existing cast. In case a fight thread does come around in the future, it’d be an ideal thing to have ready to go and bring him further up to par with other fighters!

Just like that, I subjected myself to extra homework. Coming up with the moves themselves came to me simply enough, in seeing how air was played with in other media I was familiar with (key ones being Sonic the Hedgehog, The Legend of Zelda, and Avatar: The Last Airbender) and fashioning some of my own spins on top of some original ideas. I knew I wanted to lean hard on the bird motif since his zan spirit is a tengu, and given the wide variety of things the element of air/wind can do, I thought to make full connections between the two by theming each special move after certain species of bird! Creating those moves and naming them were the easy parts.

Naming them, that is, in English. Naming them all in Japanese was, by far, the hardest part. Why? Parce que je ne suis pas japonais, et aussi parce que je ne parle pas la langue, you see. On top of language barriers, the Japanese tongue operates on a whole other set of rules, compared to the Latin/Germanic-based ones I’ve grown used to with English, French, and (at one point) German. I did take some Japanese classes as an elective back in university, but that was only in first year – my own understanding, as a result, was threadbare and surface level at best, so that was not going to get me anywhere. I did not want to half-ass it with romaji and I love Bleach too much to not want to do these ideas justice.

I am a stickler when it comes to detail and canon-compliance, so getting the naming right by abiding to the proper conventions as best as I possibly could became my topmost priority. Google Translate was not going to fly because lord knows it’s no good without proper context between wholly different languages in English and Japanese, and it only gets wilder once you throw Chinese into the mix, given I’m supposed to use kanji. Thus, the name of the game here turned out to be “reverse engineering,” and I had to go in accepting I probably wasn’t going to get it 100% right the first time.

“What rules do zanpakutō names and special attack names follow?” “How do I apply on- or kun-reading in spelling out a group of certain kanji?” “Where are the common denominators in those rules that I can identify?” “Which language conventions have I already picked up from watching god knows how much anime over the years that I can replicate?” “Which set of words best conveys this particular English word that has no direct Japanese translation?” “How does [x] roll off the tongue? Does it sound right and fluid enough, or does it still feel super stilted and weird?” It was a loooooooot of this until I was finally satisfied with each individual end result!

Tl;dr: Jisho.org and Wikipedia were godsends during this whole process. I also want to thank @tigrextoque who gave me some helpful pointers after the fact!

ALSO... the ones on the Battle Info page aren’t even all of the ones I’ve thought about. Because I’m a glutton for punishment apparently, I purposely went and submitted a request for a certain ask meme on an ask meme source blog, JUST so I could play around with more ideas that came or would come to mind. This time, however, it was through the form of COMBINATION ATTACKS (which, by virtue alone, are honestly peak awesomeness). Those that implicated other shinigami got new bird motifs to meld the aesthetics of both muses, while I did get a couple of Quincy ones (with their referenced attacks actually using romaji as a base! Whoo-hoo for saving me the effort!) as a bonus to mix things up!

I’ll link them all right here (and later on the Battle Info page) for your convenience:

Noboru no mai, Shiro Fukurō (騰の舞・白梟, Rising Dance, Snowy Owl), with Rukia Kuchiki

Ahōdori Kyōka: Flying Battery (群烏強化: フライングバッテリー, Albatross Strengthening: Flying Battery) with Bambietta Basterbine

Muragarasu Kyōka: Galvano Volley (群烏強化: ガルヴァノボレー, Flock of Crows Strengthening: Galvano Volley), plus upgraded variant Muragarasu Kyōka: Galvano Storm (群烏強化: ガルヴァノストーム, Flock of Crows Strengthening: Galvano Storm), with Candice Catnipp

Hagetaka Rinbu (禿鷹輪舞, Vulture Round Dance) with Rangiku Matsumoto

Senkō-fū: Kitsutsuki (穿孔風: 啄木鳥, Drilling Wind: Woodpecker) with Nemu Kurotsuchi

Gyaku-fū Fūsa: Benizuru (逆風封鎖: 紅鶴, Headwind Blockade: Flamingo) with Byakuya Kuchiki

Hikuidori Hinshō (火食鳥頻傷, Cassowary Frequent Cuts) with Ueno Chie

Yes, “Flying Battery” was a deliberately written Sonic the Hedgehog reference. No, I will never apologize for that.

...might I reblog that meme again in the future though...?

...probably not right away.

So, uh... Plou, I should probably apologize for giving you a lot more than you likely bargained for, but hey, I just didn’t want to leave any stone unturned! Thank you so much for sending me your three questions, I enjoyed writing these little deep dives into my Bleach OC, and thanks for taking interest in Kōta! I hope all of my responses have been both enlightening and to your satisfaction.

#deivorous #{ i’m falling free in the wind ☁ headcanon ☁ }#{ cut for length }#{ whispers in the wind ☁ replies ☁ }#{ beyond the sky ☁ ooc ☁ }#{ ooc: we hope to return to our regular programming tomorrow-! }#{ i just could not focus much until i answered all of these hahahaha- }

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aer-in-wanderland · 3 years

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구미호뎐 | Tale of the Nine Tailed - Ji Ah’s Fate & the Korean Mythology Surrounding It (requested by @kestrel-of-herran)

Ask: One of the most fascinating things for me is the prophecy the fortune teller told Ji Ah when she gave him the fox bead. I feel like that's important foreshadowing for the drama's ending. How would you translate and interpret that?

Note: words/terms left in Korean require context and will be discussed below.

EP06 The Four Pillars of Fate - Ji Ah Trades the Fox Bead

Ji Ah: I’ll repay this eunhye no matter what, please?

Fortune Teller: Okay, okay! You were a princess in your past life, do you think you’re a princess now? You think if you whine enough you can have anything. Ei! Your hand. Give me thine hand. (Ji Ah extends her right hand). Left hand!

Ji Ah: (changing hands) Left hand.

Fortune Teller: You were born with a very special saju weren’t you! Water and fire vie on par, earth is clouded, but metal will subdue it, so though darkness should surround you (literally: all four directions, heaven, and earth), a moon rises in your sky.

Ji Ah: I’m not sure what you mean...?

Fortune Teller: You have the fox bead! For that is your moon.

Ji Ah: Excuse me?

Fortune Teller: Give to me the fox bead. Even without a moon, your saju is overflowing enough. Therefore...!

Ji Ah: I’ll give it to you! I don’t believe in such things as palja.

Fortune Teller: The deal...has been accepted.

Ji Ah: Pardon? Already?

Fortune Teller: Your palm lines. Your palm lines have changed.

(Note: I translated this working from the raw, so I haven’t seen the subs to be able to comment on them).

Eunhye (은혜)

Commonly translated as a ‘favor’ or ‘debt,’ ‘eunhye’ is distinct from both of these both linguistically and conceptually. When Yeon says that foxes are obligated to repay ‘debts,’ he’s actually talking about eunhye. ‘Debt’ is another word entirely (빚) and it does appear occasionally. The two are distinct. The glowing ring bonds formed between Yeon and Ah Eum, and Rang and Sajang are both manifestations of eunhye.

One Korean folktale in which eunhye features famously is the tale of the Grateful Magpies (은혜갚은 까치, literally: ‘the magpies who repaid their eunhye’). Shin Joo refers to this in EP02 when Yeon tells him about returning Ji Ah’s eyesight to her even after she tranquilized him:

Shin Joo: And you’re saying you just let her go? And returned her sight, too?

Yeon: Since rules are rules.

Shin Joo: It’s not as if we’re magpies meticulously repaying our eunhye! Geez, how long do we have to be bound by that sort of premodern contractual relationship?

Eunhye is difficult to translate but can be approximated as ‘help or favor (as in ‘to favor someone’) given willingly.’ In my mind, rather than a debt which is a negative concept, eunhye is more of a positive concept. There’s a voluntary, good faith/good will element to it. So you’re ‘indebted’ as the result of a good deed done for you. Except it’s not so voluntary if you’re a gumiho, apparently.

In contrast, when Yeon tells Eodukshini, ‘I’ll repay this debt shortly,’ in EP08 (could also be translated sarcastically as ‘I’ll return the favor shortly’), he uses the actual word for debt (빚) - no good will to be had here on either side.

Saju Palja (사주팔자）

Literally ‘four pillars eight characters’ (四柱八字), commonly translated as the ‘four pillars of destiny/fate.’ The concept comes from the Chinese astrological concept that a person’s destiny or fate can be divined by the two sexagenary cycle characters assigned to their birth year, month, day, and hour. For more on that, I’ll refer you to Wikipedia. ;)

In EP02, when Yeon asks Taluipa to look into whether Ji Ah’s parents are alive or dead, he has Ji Ah text him their saju (birth dates and times).

I’m not sure how palmistry fits in with the concept, and am no expert in astrology, western or eastern, so I can’t offer any interpretation of the fortune teller’s prophecy, but if anyone wants to try looking into it I’d be intrigued to hear what you find. Apparently, the writer spent 2.5 years on the script, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there’s actual meaning behind it.

The Fox Bead (여우 구슬)

Fox beads are a common earmark of gumiho lore in both Korea and Japan (and probably China, too, but I don’t know enough Chinese to speak to that). In most tellings I’ve encountered, a fox can’t live without their bead, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Yeon. I was also intrigued by the following exchange he has with the Magistrate in EP06:

Yeon: That’s the Mirror of the Moon. Do you mean to harm (literally: catch) a human with one of the four great mountain gods’ four great treasures meant to protect all creation?

Magistrate: And so, did your fox bead protect all of creation? Or did it protect one person?

To my thinking, this implies that Yeon’s fox bead is being attributed to his status as a mountain god as much as it is to his being a fox. None of our other foxes seem to have one, but none of them are gumiho (gu = nine, ie. the number of tails), much less cheonho (heavenly foxes) like Yeon.

I’m actually a little unclear on this front as well. According to the excerpt from the Hyeonjoong’gi (玄中記) at the start of the first episode, foxes that live to be a hundred can take human form and foxes that live to be a thousand become cheonho. Shin Joo is obviously at least 600 years old but he doesn’t appear to be anywhere near Yeon’s caliber (or even Rang’s who is half human), something he says himself, and in the spin-off he only had one tail. Yoo Ri is younger still. It’s unclear to me whether they will ‘level up' if they live long enough, or if they will never be as powerful as Yeon, regardless of how long they live. I get the sense it’s the latter. Both Yeon and Shin Joo have said that Yeon was of a different caliber from the very beginning (in EP02 and EP03, respectively).

Finally, we haven’t been told much about the fox bead’s powers other than emitting an aura only Yeon can see (sometimes) and suppressing Imoogi inside of Ji Ah. I’m hoping we see it again before the series wraps, but not convinced they’ll have time to recover it given everything else that needs to happen.

On another note, based on the preview for EP15, it appears that the Magistrate’s Mirror of the Moon will be coming back into play. My guess is that Imoogi is going to steal it from the Magistrate and use it on Taluipa. She was shown turned to stone in the background while Yeon and Terry-Imoogi fight. That’s originally her power, so I think Imoogi may use the mirror against her similarly to how the Magistrate ‘absorbed’ the sword Yeon sent flying at him and re-directed it at Ji Ah.

The Jeo Seung Shi Wang (저승 시왕)

The Ten Kings of the Afterlife (jeo-seung-shi-wang) [저승 시왕], as they’re known in the drama, are more commonly called the Ten Kings of the Underworld (myeong-bu-shi-wang) [명부 시왕・冥府十王]. In the subs they appear as the Afterlife Judges, which is accurate in that this is one of the key roles that they perform. As we're told in EP13, the fortune teller is actually one of them.

Yeon: What’s the word? That fortune teller, did you find out about him?

Snail Bride: I’ve been asking around via our patrons.

Yeon: He didn’t seem to be just another low-level native (Korean) god. What’s the geezer’s deal?

Snail Bride: This seems like just a baseless rumour, but there was talk that one of the Ten Kings of the Afterlife who rule over hell leaves his position without notice at odd times.

Yeon: Heh...Interesting. In any case, relay any news you hear about that geezer to me as soon as you hear it.

While the Snail Bride seems to doubt the validity of the rumour, Yeon appears confident it’s true. He later relays this to Team Fox at their strategy meeting:

Yeon: Do you remember the fortune teller we met at the Korean Folk Village?

Ji Ah: Of course I remember! (Shooting Rang a dirty look) Because of someone [your] fox bead was stolen from us.

Rang: I heard rumour he’s a major big shot. Is it true?

Yeon: He’s one of the Ten Kings of Hell.

Rang: What?!

Yeon: They say he’s also in possession of the Uiryeong’geom (geom = sword).

Rang: No way~

Jae Hwan: What’s the Uiryeong’geom?

Shin Joo: It’s a sword that cuts evil (literally: sins).

Jae Hwan: Cuts...evil, you said?

Shin Joo: It’s sword they say was made in ancient days by King Yeomra himself from a branch he broke off of the Uiryeongsu (su = tree) that weighs sins. But, didn’t that disappear from the world several thousand years ago?

Yeon: (Shaking his head) Uh-uh. The Snail Bride just picked it up.

As you may recall, the Ten Kings are the ones who put a celestial hit on Rang which led Yeon to track him down and pretend to kill him (thanks for the angst), and they’re the ones who passed judgement on Yeon after he killed the mudang (shamanness) and sentenced him to time in the Snow Mountain Prison.

It appears that there was some confusion going around that the fortune teller is King Yeomra. Given the above dialogue, I can see where people may have understood his possession of the sword to indicate that, and, in truth, we don’t know which of the Ten Kings he is. That being said, I think if King Yeomra was frequently vacating his post without notice, someone would have said something. I also think Yeomra is a big enough name that if it were him they would’ve just come out and said so. Yeomra is also Taluipa’s brother so she, at least, would know. My assumption was that he was one of the other, less well known kings.

To conclude, this has all been a long way of saying that I have no idea what Ji Ah’s palja will mean for her fate. What I can provide is a little context. I’m not familiar with the sword, and it doesn’t turn up when I google it, so I suspect it was invented for the purpose of the show. Whether it remains a red herring until the end or shows up in the final hour remains to be seen.

#tale of the nine tailed #nam ji ah #korean mythology #ask #totnt #구미호뎐 #남지아 #my translations #kestrel-of-herran #totnt ask

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unproduciblesmackdown · 3 years

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some genius pt Musings i’ve been having this time around

1) the question of “is mytho’s hair white just from unknown decades of Time Passage within the paused story, like, his hair pigmentation Aged but nothing else lol” or “That, but his hair is white from the stress” (it’s that one lol. plus fr why would only his hair change due to Time) but i wanna introduce a Third Element: i think we can suppose in-the-story tutu’s appearance / disappearance happens just before or v shortly before the interrupted non-ending of prinz und rabe, and it sure seems like some or all or some Version of tutu’s Essence & part of the prince’s heart are like, truly Merged, and what if it’s that the prince got white hair from That b/c it was more swan-esque. a la the white feathery part of ahiru-tutu’s (& that one design of seemingly-prinz-und-rabe tutu)’s hair

2) again w/the matter of how at least part of Original Tutu seems to exist on in the prince’s physical heart: there’s the brief mention that fakir and mytho dance b/c Mytho Likes To Dance, which like, would be one of those Traits that transcends his emotions, like how he protects everything (so does tutu? emotionally? while the prince protects everyone physically (against a Metaphor for Despair so is that not also, in a way, emotionally too) like thank you power couple) but there’s also the brief mention that tutu is a Spirit Of Dance maybe so it’s like, again, did tutu becoming part of mytho pass something along in that way which imbues him with that proclivity to dance (although you’ve also got neko-sensei saying his dancing was not that Emotional earlier, which makes sense, but also seems like tutu protecting Feelings happens via dance. by “seems” i mean “this is a key aspect of literally every part of this series” s/o to me) or on another note: maybe drosselmeyer just wrote prinz und rabe For Adaptation lmfao. he was like “fuck yes they’re gonna make this into a ballet.” what with this series’ implication that like....the nutcracker is one of his stories where he just so happens to have a full self-insert who textually uses that power to make stories become reality. and that sure is a ballet. and from looking it up just now i’m learning that it was Based on a preexisting story, and, reading the wikipedia summary, i’m also remembering i’ve read an adapted-into-another-book version of this story, and it sure has another layer of “story interwoven with / becoming Reality” to it. anyways my point is i suppose, Watsonianly Speaking, prinz und rabe involving Ballet could’ve been Written Into It throughout all the characters, or maybe it’s just tutu who dances, which then becomes part of mytho’s character when her sacrifice like, bonds (part of? all? whomst can say) her to his heart. bless. doylean reason is this is a series about ballet and stuff

3) Another Briefly Mentioned thing when mytho talks about how he apparently could just naturally draw birds to him. and ahiru having that happen in the first episode/s is like, could be b/c she’s a bird or could be because she has part of the prince’s heart, as is emphasized like, immediately during the Bird Visit in ep 1. so i just had the thought like, a duck who cares about mytho gets to become tutu, but what if it was any other bird, surely it Could be. that fledgling canary he’s saving in episode 1 gets to become tutu mid-fall

4) i had some other Thought and i’ve forgotten it. well in the meantime thinking about how everyone dunks on Prinz Und Rabe Textual Lohengrin as the useless loser failure knight lmaooo but then like, that was just re: the One mentioned fatal raven encounter & also specifically about that lohengrin can’t protect the prince with his sword. but like, sure Behearted Mytho can probably exercise a little more discretion in risking his life to save whatever needs protecting, vs unsupervised heartless mytho diving out of windows, but can we really suppose he was That much more careful about staying safe vs impulsively throwing himself into a situation to save something at all costs. how much work did lohengrin do simply making sure the prince didn’t die in that sort of way. thank you lohengrin

5) oh right. i was thinking about Magic i think. s/o to the person who had the idea that when tutu sacrificed herself and turned into Light she might’ve merged with Good Magic in the story’s world, which the prince also had access to, and that’s how she kind of literally becomes part of him / they share powers / they share their Swan / Dance visual themes & stuff. & i was sure at one point wondering about the Forbidden But Granted Only To The Prince (own...?)-heart-shattering ability, like, maybe at some point an implicitly more specific verb was used like “taught,” or did the prince simply just Have the power by virtue of being the prince, or did it like, come from tutu who has the tie to the prince & Loved him & has those abilities to protect people’s Feelings, although maybe that’s just like, a choice and not inherently part of the magic lol. and then the Real World Magic we see is just like, inherited. but wait then there’s that bridge & ghosts & stuff, although there’s Stories about those too apparently. nvm this one’s really vague i’m just wondering if the Prince alone has that heartshattering Magic Technique through tutu or what. could be anything

6) but no really i think i had some other Thought, i’m sure it was great & ig i’ll reblog if it reoccurs to me, but i got distracted down another mental track so, you know, rip. in the meantime just thinking like, i have no imagination but was trying to muse on some sort of big Attack power the prince could have, b/c the classic thing to happen in the story (whether mentioned in its text or not) is for mytho to go ham with some such Power Surge [Magic Thing] to drive the raven away after lohengrin gets Got. even after he gets his full prince Abilities back he mostly only seems to Attack with his sword. damn wait a second and when he just like crashes Into the raven the big Swan Made Of Light appears first like hang on like is that Him? was it part of his Transport, can he like, Also turn into a swan of light or is it just how he Appears, was it tutu’s Hope Manifestation again since he’s being That to rue in that moment, oh my god. a lot to consider. anyways, but then the thing is, some sort of like Energy Blast move would go outside the realm of [fighting with the sword alone] and the prince’s Magic mostly seeming to be like, a mobility Boost, and how everything abt the prince is centered around Defense and Protection rather than going on the offensive. but then, who’s to say the Heart Shattering technique couldn’t be used as an Attack but was used by the prince only as a self-sacrificial protective thing, and who’s to say the prince Doesn’t have other powerful Attacks to draw from but refrains from using them if there’s others around to be hurt or whatever. i’m just trying to think of how the prince could just really go tf off and Immediately get the raven to fuck off after lohengrin is ko’d because that’s appropriately Tragically Dramatic & Emotion-Fueled Magic, not to mention the best case scenario vs still having to continue like 23 hours of battle when your boyfriend Just died. i mean like boom Light Blasts type situation i guess. or maybe he could just land a really good sword hit like Right Away. thinking about it. anyways

7) oh wait shit lmfao idk if this was The other thought but it was Another thought. that everyone in The Story (Within Reality) is like, locked in The Town (although they can leave if they’re not a Character / if they entered from outside? presumably) but in episode one this all kicks off b/c mytho was at The Lake which is Outside the town, right? i’m pretty sure. which like, is that something he Can and has been able to Do.....is this a. a liminal space. or did/does drosselmeyer like drop him over there sometimes For Some Reason, like having “stages” available around here, a la the s1 finale.....like, didn’t seem like he Knew if he put mytho in front of waterfowl that one would become devoted to restoring mytho’s heart. probably Does Not Matter, Actually, but it sure happened and much to Think about there. shoutout to mytho dancing en pointe whenever it’s magical and he can do so, e.g. when dancing naked on the surface of a liminal lake, or midair with tutu. iconic

8) the point is i’m sure just Thinking About Him (mytho)

#long post ////#princess tutu #brain going [epcot vine] Mytho.......#let's see if i can get normal General Mode brain back lol #good luck to me trying to remember what it was i forgot....nothing that urgent or even much of a question as i recall the gist of it but....#also me reading the wikipedia entry for the nutcracker (ballet) like what do you MEAN it wasn't a success when it opened!!!!!!!! fuck that #imagine having to wait like 75+ years for that album to finally become Popular ugh god.....#omfggg just heard word that someone made the choc chip cookie mix Fuck yes. Thee s-tier dessert...speaking of the nutcracker (ft's desserts)

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mytastessuck · 3 years

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Gorillaz: Demon Day

1Ah, the magnum opus. This might not be my favorite Gorillaz album but when think of Gorillaz, they always bring this masterpiece up. As I brought up before, this album was responsible for getting me back into Gorillaz in the first place, my dad buying me a copy as soon as it was released. Needless to say, my hyper ass hyperfixated on this band. I looked up their lyrics, went to their site, read their lore, listened to their interviews and brought issues of Tank Girl. This album basically defined me from 10-15 and I will always be grateful to it for that. This stuff is the GOAT for alternative hip-hop/rock and we are basically going to salivate over it for 15 tracks.

1. Intro

Love this foreboding shit. The instruments, the voices, the zombie stuff...hell yeah. I never skipped this part when I put the CD in the player. When I heard, "Now entering the harmonic door..." I would just grin like a maniac.

8/10

2. Last Living Souls

This is some melodic shit! From the chorus to the verses to the bridge, this shit manages to keep you in while filling you up with your daily recommended dose of solipsism. This is an ass-kicker.

10/10

3. Kids With Guns

This song apparently caused a controversy because kids and guns are not supposed to mentioned in the same sentence unless you're doing a report on Call of Duty: Black Ops but I personally thought this song was just average...until you got to the breakdown. All that noise proceeds to drown you in audio goodness before cutting out before you drown. Hats off to you, guys.

8/10

4. O Green World

Love this. The mixing, the chanting, the singing and random screaming. I don't know what it is with Gorillaz and their more environmental work but they tend to hit the ball out of the park every time they go green.

10/10

5. Dirty Harry

This song has every thing you need for a 2000s track. Kids singing, nice beats, Bush-trashing...basically, it's an excellent time capsule of mid-2000s culture all thrown at you by Bootie Brown stomping on you. What I especially like about this track is how the laughter at the end fades into the far less comforting laughter of...

10/10

6. Feel Good Inc.

I don't fuck with this song anymore.

This song...I would wake up and run to the nearest room this song was playing. I would memorize episodes and timeslots of wherever this song dropped on. I would attack anyone who attempted to turn this song off on the radio. This was my favorite song of all time. This song introduced me to De La Soul. I played this song all the time...to the point that I'm absolutely sick of it years later. I also hate it when people hold it up as the ultimate Gorillaz song. Ya'll know they did better stuff, right? Hell, their B-sides have better songs! But...I respect the shit out of this song. And I'm still grateful to it for fueling my Gorillaz fanaticism.

10/10

7. El Manana

Man, this song used to depress the shit out of me. Even before the video came out. Damon's voice is so oddly sorrowful for a pining side. Thank god he's married because I can see the Maenads swimming up to his beach and tearing him apart for bumming them out with his crooning. I remember when a Wikipedia article was vandalized to suggest this song was about 2D singing to Noodle. Gross, right?

9/10

8. Every Planet We Reach Is Dead

Damn, the piano on this is tight. I remember finding out Ike Turner did the piano on this and telling my dad. My dad thought he died. And he did. A year later. I don't begrudge the music team for working with Ike. He was a genuinely talented musician and a rock n' roll father. Plus, his career was still down the toilet after this so it's not like they did him a huge favor. Still though, listen to the breakdown after the verses. That shit can send you into hyperspace.

10/10

9. November Has Come

MF DOOM. I've been a fan of this guy since the Danger Mouse collaboration and he shows why on this track. I knew that there was only one guy talking on this track and it still sounded like a couple of guys conversing. This dude ruled. RIP

10/10

10. All Alone

A song to shake your rump to and to scare you out of a chill out! I love two-for-one deals! This is where Gorillaz start to bust genres like they owed them money. Rap mixed with soulful singing is a great taste that should be encountered more often. Kudos.

9/10

11. White Light

Fuck yes. This track is short yet sour-sweet with its weird mumbling, scatting, guitar work and heavenly break. Man, I would kill to be somewhere where this playing live. I would mosh to this so hard...good on you, Murdoc.

11/10

12. Dare

It's there, indeed. Finally, a song you can dance to without getting self-conscious. I will work it out, Noodle. I will work it out to your singing and the crowd chatter at the end. You all shake it with me. I hate dancing alone.

9/10

13. Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey's Head

This shit is spooky! Thanks Dennis Hopper for creeping me out well into my twenties. I still get shivers when I hear "Without the truth of the eyes, the Happy Folk were blind." The singing is nice too, tying everything together with even more nihilistic imagery. Ooo-ooo-AH.

10/10

14. Don't Get Lost In Heaven

Pretty nice. Nothing special but it's not suckage either. Just a nice faux-gospel theme to mellow out to. It's cool but I really like this song for being the perfect lead in to my favorite song on the album...

8/10

15. Demon Days

When I first got this album and listened to it, I was disappointed to say the least. "Really? All that awesome shit and you finish it on gospel? I can't even understand what these guys are saying! Fuck it." I skipped it every time I played the album. It wasn't until years later when I looked up the lyrics and sung along to the song that the plug to my stupid brain finally went in the album. This song manages to talk about enlightenment without mentioning God. It tells us to live right without mentioning religion. It uses a choir. It's one of my favorite non-gospel gospel songs and it's one of my Gorillaz works. Praise them.

20/10

Album score: 10.01/10

Tune in next week for D-Sides. And if I thought I was unfair with this score...

#gorillaz #music #demon days #review

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vaguely-concerned · 4 years

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Some T.F./Graves thoughts from their bios

I realize what a dumb move it is to base uuuuh basically anything on lol bios, since riot apparently change those like other people do underwear, but if I’m not here to build my castles on sand what am I here for honestly

- I LOVE the description of their first meeting, it’s such a meet cute lol... these two assholes really did just take one look at each other and mutually went ‘so is anyone gonna enter into a life-defining homoerotic partnership with this lying cheating bastard??’ and then neither of them waited for an answer

- Though at times Twisted Fate would blow all their shares and leave them with nothing to show for it, Graves knew that the thrill of some new escapade was always just around the corner…

I am genuinely a little emotional about how obvious it is that at the end of the day the money really is secondary to him - what really drives him is how much FUN they have together. (he seems in general quite driven by that sense of Adventure; if it were just about the cash he had steady work in bilgewater before he took the trip over to the mainland as a kid) it’s like the part of ‘the road to el dorado’ in the boat except more sincere... ‘you made my life an adventure bro’ :’)

(also very funny that graves’ bio is where you learn that t.f. doesn’t always win or get away with his shit hahaha, in his own bio it’s played like ‘oh gotta let people win once in a while to throw off suspicion’ flasdhfjsad. it’s mentioned he gets caught a lot more without graves watching his back too, which also gets me in my feelings a bit)

- one thing I find interesting is that t.f.’s parents aren’t referenced directly at any point (the only family members mentioned specifically are his aunt and grandfather, I’m pretty sure). I’m wondering if they were already out of the picture somehow and that’s part of the reason no one spoke up for him? I mean it’s fucked up either way, I don’t know what’s worse; that his people found it so easy to exile him because he didn’t have anyone to protect him, or that his parents were alive and JUST LEFT HIM THERE. like what the fuck. from how it’s written it’s pretty clear he was still considered a child at the time too, so, y’know. (Graves is described as ‘little more than a youth’ when he headed for the mainland while T.F. seems to have been a kid when he started being on his own, so I’ve headcanoned something like 16-17 and 13-14 for their respective ages of leaving home, with both of them around 19 when they met) I’m quite curious about what kind of internal family politics were at work for them to apparently all agree -- or perhaps be too intimidated to disagree -- to exile a child for life with no recourse and no resources. like yeah okay he messed up but that’s some next level assholery to pull on a kid honestly, no wonder he grows up to have a bunch of abandonment and emotional intimacy issues (and presumably some prime survivor’s guilt as well. oh buddy)

- eternally entertained by how much meeting t.f. is worded like the ‘how they met their spouse’ section of a wikipedia article in graves’ bio

Across one table, he met a deplorable fellow named Malcolm Graves is also *mwha* so good

- for fic purposes I would just like to give a moment of thanks for the paragraph in graves’ bio that mentions a bunch of shenanigans they got up to back in the day, very useful thank you

- from what I understand t.f.’s exile-causing transgression has been changed quite recently from fighting back to running away, which I am so happy about because it makes a lot more psychological sense to me and makes graves’ words in ‘burning tides’ hit so much better.

- I like that their individual descriptions of graves being captured are so indicative of how they each think about it -- namely t.f. doesn’t want to think about it (repress! repress! repress! very relatable) but probably has the more accurate view of it: The exact details of that night remain shrouded in mystery, for neither of them likes to speak of it—but Graves was taken alive, while Tobias and their other accomplices ran free, while graves does think about it but sort of still has his trauma goggles on for it: During a heist that rapidly turned from complex to completely botched, Graves was taken by the local enforcers, while Twisted Fate merely turned tail and abandoned him. t.f.’s is obfuscating and refusing to engage in the emotional aspect of it, graves’ is much more emotive in the language used, like ‘abandoned’. the lol bios often teeter awkwardly between straight biographies and wanting to dip into prose/flavour text, I must say I usually find them very clunky and unsatisfying, but this juxtaposition works for me.

sort of weird the details that don’t make it in, though -- like the fact that they’re both aware that miss fortune was the one who screwed them over in the whole gangplank Situation? (I love that part in ‘destiny and fate’ where graves is gamely like ‘yeah of course I’ve got a grudge against her but that was pretty metal too so y’know *shrug*’ haha)

- it’s interesting how much t.f.’s uh connection I guess to the cards is almost described as some kind of... compulsion/unstoppable drive in the middle of his bio and then fades into the background towards the end (because his priorities have changed to repairing his marriage now that it’s an option and by god I support him in that). I really do wonder how his card magic actually works -- it’s a cool mix of extremely unsubtle and undeniable sorcery (straight up throwing fireballs around) and subtle (’hunches’, being ‘guided’, just knowing things he sort of shouldn’t), which seems to be where it started

also it seems like he can do it with just about any playing card he comes across? would be sort of weird if it’s the cards that are special, considering he keeps throwing them away and also I don’t know a lot about gambling but I distinctly imagine that casinos don’t let you use your own decks haha. and t.f. seemingly can’t do magic just on his own, without them. so it’s a thing that happens very specifically in relationship, when all the elements come together, symbiotically sort of thing? could he do magic without the cards but it’s how he’s trained himself to think of it so he doesn’t realize it (well I honestly doubt that but just for the thought experiment)? is there some sort of spirit behind those cards looking out for him? is it lady luck keeping an eye out for her favorite boy lol? we know this stuff can physically change the cards like when they showed the crown in ‘destiny and fate’, and he seems able to ‘prime’ a card with magic beforehand if ‘double-double cross’ is anything to go by, but even then mf can’t actually use or release it. hmmmmm many questions

- the more of my long fic I write the more I am questioning what the fuck these two DO with all the money they steal -- like they’ve clearly pulled off some HUGE heists, surely it can’t all go into like drinks and cigars and fancy waistcoats and tf’s seemingly unending supply of playing cards

do they have like. a bunch of small caches of gold hidden away all across two continents in case of emergency? are their buried treasures the stuff of runeterran urban legend and people go out hunting for them? Have they invested this stuff in actual banks? (actually no I refuse to accept that as a possibility lol if nothing else this would make it hard to figure out if they were robbing THEMSELVES sometimes, sounds like a lot of hassle)

- His people had always waved away concerns over primitive magic and “cartomancy”, but now Tobias began to seek out ever more dangerous means to bend the cards to his will.

I’m having a little bit of a hard time parsing this -- does this mean his people didn’t believe the cards were magic at all and he’s the only person he knows who can do it, or do they know but just don’t think can be dangerous??? I chose one particular interpretation for my fic, but I honestly can’t figure out what it’s actually meant to mean haha

- T.F. getting a special satisfaction from robbing people who are Assholes is a good character detail (his colour story really goes out of its way to show that the merchant he’s playing against is a real shitbag, for example); there is some lopsided form of righteousness/sense of justice there, I think. and it also ties in with why I like that his exile was because he ran away rather than because he resorted to violence -- there’s this underlying sense that he particularly enjoys outsmarting people who’re dickish to outsiders in precarious situations (like his people) so thoroughly that they don’t even realize it before he’s long gone, without ever having to even lay a finger on them, because that’s a way to fight back while staying out of reach when you come from relative powerlessness. There’s a... lack of malice, I guess, to both of them that I find quite endearing, you can see in Burning Tides that even at his most mindlessly vengeful Graves doesn’t actually enjoy being actively cruel. ‘mutual sense of roguish honor’ is RIGHT they’re bad men but not Bad men you get me

- All in all, Twisted Fate is glad to have his old friend back, even if it might take another job or two—or ten—to restore their once easy partnership.

This probably means nothing because as I said the lol bios seem an endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of canon, but I think it’s so sweet that both of their last sentences/’where are they now’ statements are about them wanting to repair their partnership (and do some Cool Big Stuff together in graves’ case, I do wonder if that’s foreshadowing for the ruined king game or what)

#tf x graves #twistedgraves #league of legends #listen overwatch trained me well in trying to tease something like lore out of the smallest little crumb of detail I cannot be stopped

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