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#which leaves us with power of three! and it's not great and the actual PLOT is stupid and it's like chibbs watched classic series 7 and went
checkoutmybookshelf · 10 months
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The Quartet That Started It All
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As followers of this blog will note, this is not actually the quartet that started it all for me, but it DID launch author Tamora Pierce's career in the 1980s, and Alanna remains absolutely beloved among Pierce's heroines. Let's talk the Song of the Lioness Quartet.
In a classic case of "if I can't do this as a girl, then I'll do this as a boy and I have a handy twin brother to go full Twelfth Night with," Alanna of Trebond begins The First Adventure by dressing as a boy to train as a page in Tortall's royal court. This book introduces all our main characters and establishes Alan the page amongst his peers and Alanna as she finds herself and her place in chivalry.
One of the other amazing things about Alanna's story overall is that she begins it absolutely terrified of her own magical gift. Her arc includes learning to work with her magic rather than to fear it, and that's a twist on magic users that I really appreciated. We often get overly confident magic users--indeed, we'll get TWO of them later in the series--but it's rare that we get magic users who are fully aware of their powers and are still absolutely terrified of them. So of course, the story and the world and Pierce herself keep throwing Alanna into situations where she has no choice but to develop and use her gift. It's so, so good. This first book covers Alanna's page years, and we move into her squire years in book two.
In the Hand of the Goddess really expands on Alanna's key relationship with Prince Jon on Conte, Duke Roger of Conte, and Geroge Cooper. Alanna moves into a wider world of adult politics and stakes in this book. From being able to defeat an older, stronger, and more experienced opponent in a duel to developing her healing skills when a wound puts her out of commission during a war, Alanna cements her skills, connections, and position in society. This culminates with unmasking Roger as an attempting regicide and the accidental reveal of her gender.
This book is really, really good, and extends Alanna's childhood fear of magic to her fear of Roger specifically in a really natural, logical way. I could say more about the details, but these two books have an episodic vibe to them, so I won't spend too much time exploring every single key plot event.
The Woman Who Rides Like a Man sees Alanna spending her first year as a knight in the desert, with a Bazhir tribe. She becomes their shaman by way of self-defense; she murders their first shaman when he tries to murder her for "being unnatural." Then it falls to Alanna to train three magic users for the tribe, and this is where we see more nuance into how different magic users relate to their powers, from sheer hubris to fear to "this is just part of me, let's do this." It's a phenomenal experience for Alanna, and she learns as much from her students as they do
Book three also sees Jonathan bitching to hell and back about having to be king, which is not a great look, and it's one Alanna calls him on. He spends most of the book alternating between pitching a hissy fit, begging Alanna to marry him, and training to take over as Voice of the Tribes. The interesting thing here is that Alanna refuses to marry Jon. He is trying to fit Alanna into his own fairy tale, and she very much goes "That isn't our relationship, I can't do that. We aren't meant to be like that, and that's ok." If I could inject that lesson into humanity's collective head, I would. It's well done and it's great.
Lioness Rampant picks up on Alanna's travels after she leaves the Bazhir, and eventually sees her return to Corus with a magical artifact to help secure Jonathan's position as king.
There's also the teeny tiny complication that Alanna's twin brother, Thom, has resurrected Duke Roger. Absolute chaos ensues, and Roger almost manages to take out the entire court during Jonathan's coronation. Nobody should have to kill an evil sorceror twice, but Alanna did.
If you want to dive into Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe, starting with Alanna is absolutely a good choice. These books hold a very soft spot in my heart, and they're never not engaging.
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fairytale-poll · 2 months
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SEMIFINAL ROUND, MATCH 1 OUT OF 2!
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Propaganda Under the Cut:
Mofurun as “Mofurella”
listen. they do an episode where they’re all sucked into Cinderella and they make the trans teddy bear Cinderella. Incredible story writing, 10/10, no notes.
Mofurdella is even plot relevant, that episode is how they get the Rainbow Carriage for their group attack anyway MOFURDELLA FIRST CINDERELLA PRECURE EPISODE TO GET ONE MOFURILLION VOTES
Ella of Frell:
She’s had a “gift” of obedience placed on her, and her quest is to figure out how to get rid of it. I love her
he’s under a curse that makes her obey any order given to her. She met her Prince Charming (Char) when they kids, and they became friends. Her stepsisters found out about her curse while they were at boarding school, and because of that (and some things they made her do) she ran away to try and find the fairy that cursed her. When she does, the fairy says that she doesn’t do magic anymore, because she realized her gifts were actually curses, and refuses to remove it. Ella goes back, and is eventually demoted from “lord’s daughter” to “maid”. She still writes letters to Char (currently in a foreign kingdom, but before that, when he came to try and talk to her, her sister forbid her from leaving her room so she would have all his attention), but eventually stops and even writes a fake letter from her sister to convince him that she never cared/doesn’t care about him, because she realized it would be too dangerous for them to be together; with her curse, she could easily be made to hurt or kill him. Flash forward, and Char returns home. The king throws balls, and she goes, because even if she can’t be with or let him know who she is, she just wants to see him again. Char is drawn to her, and for a lot of the three balls, they’re together. At the end, her stepsister gets jealous, and right as Char proposes (because Ella, despite having to lie about her identity, is the most honest person at the ball and a friend already), she grabs her mask, revealing her identity. Char reaches her home before she can leave, and there’s a whole scene where he finds out she’s a scullery maid, that the letter was a lie, and says that she doesn’t have to be Ella if she doesn’t want to be, and she says she’s not, and he asks if she loves him, and she does– and then it’s all ruined because he accidentally orders her to marry him, and then her stepmother tells her to, and all the while she’s fighting the curse, because she doesn’t want to endanger him and their nation, and doesn’t want her step family to be rich and powerful, and finally– she says no. She gets so excited to say no, to refuse, that she didn’t even fully realize she broke the curse until Mandy (her fairy godmother) tells her. Anyway, they all lived happily ever after. Ella is one of my favorite Cinderellas ever and I really hope I did a good job of explaining her and what her story is about (it’s been a while since I’ve read the book)
I was so enraptured with this book as a kid, it had such an impact on my young mind. Got me into fantasy.
BEST CINDERELLA!!! please use the picture from the book cover and not the movie 🙏
She breaks her curse spell in such a magnificent way. Like yes she embodies the whole “kindness” and “courageous” characteristics that Cinderellas are known for, but for her she’s been forced to be obedient as well. And while she thinks can rise above anything she soon learns she will just hurt so many more people that way. She chose to be self-sacrificing because it was the one way she could express her love that wouldn’t harm anyone (then). But! But! She also ends up getting to be selfish! And that is also a great kindness! To herself and to those whom love her and she loves in return.  All that after she breaks the curse.
She can mimic languages. :) She refused to marry the love of her life and thus broke her curse. :) She fell in love via letters. :) She lied to the royal family that orange carriages are very popular in a nearby city.
brave, smart, a linguist, a nerd, she evolves steadily and beautifully throughout the book, with a sharp voice that never stops being distinctive and fun to hang with.
complex character coool as fuck premise and also. the nostalgia of it all
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dragonworshippersblog · 6 months
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Let's discuss some topic that I frequently read on tumblr about house of the dragon (if u do not agree then u can express ur opinion by comment, but always be educate. And if you want another topic to be discussed let me know and i will make a post)
“Aegon is the rightful king of the seven kingdoms by law”
GRRM in an interview said this “ Well, the short answer is that the laws of inheritance in the Seven Kingdoms are modeled on those in real medieval history… which is to say, they were vague, uncodified, subject to varying interpretations, and often contradictory” so we can say that male primogeniture is based on traditions, not law. King Jaehaerys with the great council of 101 at harrenal let the lords decide who should succeeded him, so he gave them a choice. But this is not the same about king viserys, he named rhaenyra as his heir and alway defended her, so viserys did not give them a choice. By usurping rhaenyra’s throne the green imply that the king’s word means nothing, and this is the thing that causes war and crisis. As we see in the book fire and blood most of the houses support rhaenyra’s cause, so otto’s word “the realm will not accept her” are revealed to be false. Again the war come from the fact that otto and alicent decide to crown aegon, so houses actually have a choice to decide who they wanted to support, if aegon hadn’t been present as an option the few houses that didn't agree with viserys choice will bent the knee alike.
“Alicent always defended rhaenyra before she lied to her about her purity”
In episode three the show let us see a conversation between otto and alicent where he said “aegon has been robbed of his own inheritance because he is the king’s first born son” and after he said that is alicent’s aim to guide the king in his decision, the second after she went to viserys’ chamber claim that there is something she want to discuss with him (viserys stopped her and they start talking about the stepstones). How do you know that she did not raise this matter anymore? In episode six when older alicent was question rhaenyra’s children she say she already talk about this before but the show didn't let us saw it, so its completely possible that she proposed aegon as heir even before rhaenyra’s lie when they were still friend
“Alicent always defend rhaenyra and yet rhaenyra send otto away when she had the possibility leaving alicent alone”
Let’s go deep into it. Queen Aemma, rhaenyra’s mother, died in order to gave the king a son, she was literally open without any kind of anesthesia so she felt every cut the maester were doing to her (and in the original script rhaenyra saw her body so she is aware that the death of her mother wasn’t a miscarriages like the other). After all of it viserys named rhaenyra his heir and married alicent, and at the time they had two children together, aegon and haelena. In this scenario otto was the second most powerful man in the realm, he ruled when viserys can’t, and he had great influence as he had great ambitions. So, rhaenyra had the chance to demonstrate that her mother’s death was not vain, and all of her miscarriages and pain had an aim now that her daughter is heir, but then there is otto and he will always be an obstacles in her rise to the throne; you, in her position, had the chance to get him go away, you choose to let him stay at court so your best friend is not alone or you choose to let him go so your rise will be more easy? Because if I were in rhaenyra’s position I would have not hesitate a second
“Alicent did not knew the council were plotting to crown aegon”
You all act like she had not the huge part in rhaenyra’s usurpation. First of all she tormented rhaenyra for a lot of years in king's landing, she moved to dragonstone (which is however the seat of the heir to the throne, rhae is the princess of dragonstone) because she couldn't take it anymore to be targeted by alicent and it was her aim in my opinion because rhaenyra not set the council would let Alicent have all the power to influence everyone about how her son is more worthy. Then she said to aegon “everyone in the realm know that one day you will be our king” so also if aegon was not meant to have the crown alicent let him believe that, and he was a boy at the time so he was easily manipulated. Then there is the petition about driftmark, you are really claim that alicent was willing to do so because she care so much to vaemond to have driftmark because its his blood rights and not because when the war she and otto create will follow she will have the velaryon flee support her? And when she said that viserys whisper to her about how aegon should succeed him? You can be team green or team black, but everyone can agree about how pathetic she was claiming that after viserys defend rhae for 20 years, and he suddenly change his mind where only her was here to listen him
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tempenensis · 6 months
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I know you don't usually weigh in on non-canon content, but I've seen a lot of people say 236 was a bad ending, or like gege joked, that things are moving too fast or he's missed a chapter (or 20, I'm personally annoyed that we jumped from Nov to Dec 24, I know gege wants the manga to end for some reason, but those three weeks of training/preparation would have been a great time to let us get re-invested in the student characters since the culling game arc felt like it was missing so much)
Do you have any feeling for what could have been a better way to end things, if indeed things are ended, for Gojou Satoru? Or do you agree that things have been moving too fast?
Sorry for this and please feel free not to answer if this is not the kind of question you want to entertain, I am just curious if you have an opinion you're willing to share since I feel you have a very good grasp of the jjk's plot and themes! I trained as a literature major, so my interest is always in whether character consistency is maintained and what a story is saying and whether that message is carried successfully or not and what that might mean for us as readers. I'm personally still on the fence about this particular twist because I'm trying to withhold judgement of the piece until we actually see it as a whole, but I am starting to feel that the narrative started to unravel a bit after Shibuya, like somehow we didn't see a lot of the characters to their full potential (like Nobara T.T my baby Nobara). Maybe this is just part of gege's notorious fast pace.
Some of this I believe is due to JJK's titular meaning of the issue of curses and what they represent being an "endless battle" but there's only so many times one can show hopelessness and loss I think before it becomes almost redundant. We actually haven't seen that many on-screen sorcerer deaths, but somehow it's been two of the most popular adult characters so far, and only direct mentors, which is a frequent trope of the hero's journey in western literature. I think that even though I really wish it hadn't happened, Nanami's ending made a lot of sense. Power-wise, Gojo's current death also makes sense, and he's not the kind of character who instantly changes his mind or learns something in his heart from a single experience, but I think it feels somewhat frustrating from my point of view because despite the bodhisattva imagery, he had more to learn as a living person, rather than continuing to believe he was like a flower and maybe no one had the right to ask him to understand. I don't know, it's just a bit frustrating for me because I think it feels character consistent (which I think gege tends to be pretty good at) but somehow incomplete too.
Again my apologies for the long ask, you're always the one I wish I could sit down and have a conversation about these things with!
-raindrop anon
Hi, raindrop anon,. Good to see you again.
First of all, I don't really think Gojou's death is particularly bad, but yeah, as you said, there might be something leaves to be desired in the plot - if jjk is a traditional shonen manga, that is. But jjk is different, which is also the reason for its popularity. I feel that jjk storytelling has always been fast-paced, and one thing that Akutami-sensei does really well is to stick to the main points that he wants to tell with his manga. The last time we have a non-serious non-battle chapter was probably chapter 64 lol - but at the same time, this also shows how jjk departs from the traditional shonen jump manga custom where the mangaka tends to drag the story to make the manga runs longer. Gege on the other hand, seems adamant to want to end the story sooner than later (if his last estimation is to be believed, only a few months left for jjk).
I don't actually have a strong feeling of how gege should end thing with Gojou, but it's been a habit of him to get to the.. shocking side of things; we see this with Gojou getting sealed back in Shibuya. Nanami's death. Then we see the Culling game, and Tengen getting killed. And lastly for Gojou to die. The longstanding status quo is going to be changed eventually. And the next one with status quo is already targeted; Sukuna himself.
As I follow this manga, "things moving too fast" has always been the opinion I saw a lot discussed here in my askbox for many, many developments in the manga. And this is more of a personal preference, but I actually like the fast-get-to-the-point-storytelling that Gege uses with jjk, exactly because how it breaks away from traditional jump manga. I feel that this fast pace is just how gege do his storytelling since the beginning lol
tldr is all I can say is jjk has always been different and fast-paced, gege is unpredictable, and I'm in the opinion that Gojou's death does make sense, unfortunately :')
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euphoric-dramione · 30 days
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January Dramione fanfic wrap-up *with links*
FULL-LENGTH:
Waifs and Strays by kyonomiko: very cute fluffy fic where draco is a cutiepie pine marten.
& Obey, Till Death Do Us Part by LongtimeLurker1111: his could’ve been a dark romance, but instead hermione decided to stay with “phin” theo and i just don’t understand it. the worst part wasn’t rapist draco bc he was the bad guy, it was rapist “phin” theo who was supposed to be good smut was nice at first.
Brand New World by NinaBinaBallerina: i loved loooved the beggining of this fic. then after they graduated and she found out she was pregnant i kinda lost the plot. i read until the point draco wanted her to move in with him while he was married to astoria and then i just skimmed until the epilogue.
In Silence And Submission by gillianeliza: this was a cool smutty bdsm fic, it had some nice things but i just think the writing was kinda wonky? nevertheless, very much enjoyed reading this.
The Fever by Flightglow32: this was supposed to be a smutty novelette but the smut happens in the very last chapter and only last five pages and we skim through the smut scenes like we’re a train on schedule and i just don’t understand why? especially because the fic was so sexual in its themes so why was the smut so lackluster??
Draconian by Noelle: It was like a really fluffy wartime with not-so big stakes, at first i thought how stragely whiny and crying hermione was all the time, but then we started to slowly find out what happened to her. I didn’t feel very much towards this story but it was entertaining and very readable.
Uncoffined by lady_of_clunn: it was nice, but due to the dubious ethics i’m quite conflicted of how i’m supposed to feel.
Damaged Goods by slytherin_after_dark: look, i know i had dnfed this when i had read only like one or two chapters, but lemme tell you how much i loed this fic when i picked it back up! it was all i needed - spicy, entertaining, angsty, with toxic but possessive and loving draco. although hermione felt ooc, it didn’t dim the reading experience.
The Politician's Wife by pir8fancier: this was so realistic, the romance was subtle but powerful, the little bit of smut we got was fantastic. also, it was incredibly well-written.
Seasons Pass (To This Ass) by mighbewriting: didn’t love it, but it was short, so i read it in one night. the smut was realistic as in how sex works but it wasn’t great smut if you know what i mean. loved draco’s quidditch player physique.
More Than One Way To Win by scullymurphy: i loooved the fake dating in this one, it was short but had all the scenes, i really liked it, although i wish there was more plot for after they got into an actual relationship.
Safe Home by khakis: cute kinda short kinda omegaverse story with draco as a werewolf but the werewolf part doesn’t play a huge part.
Breed by RoseDeVents: sooo muuuch breeeding.
The Curse of Malfoy Manor by alwaysaclaw11: a nice retelling of beauty and the beast, but it didn't leave a lasting impact on me.
Our Girl by geoblock: hands down the best smut i’ve ever read, and it's hermione x draco x theo x BLAISE
Innocent Monsters by itscometothis: very fluffy, but then draco gets depressed and a lot of attention is paid to his depression which i don’t mind, but it was a bit triggering. so not extremely fluffy, even though on of the tags was “tooth-rotting fluff”.
ONE-SHOTS:
Belladona by NinaBinaBallerina
(What’s a kink?) Between Friends by morriganmercy
Bond by spicyxpisces
Tell Me by GardenAtTwilight
Keep Me Safe by Skyfire2459
Perfect by CaityBell
Fourteen Days by its_banannaz
Marked as Mine by LilithShade
WORKS IN-PROGRESS:
Let The Dark In by senlinyu
The Sun, The Moon, The Truth by pinkinku
House Pet by NinaBinaBallerina
(all three of these are pretty dark and ansgty and VERY well written, i usually don't read wips)
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heichou-dancho · 2 days
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FFVII Rebirth thoughts (Spoilers for everything)
I reemerge having finished Rebirth after four weeks and 92 hours in-game playtime. That’s an incredibly short but also massive amount of playtime for me, Yakuza 0 took me a year with pauses. I’m still reeling after finishing chapter 13, and since all my FF buddies from the old days are long gone, I’ll just vent here. I enjoy reading the reactions and thoughts of other players, so maybe someone else does too?
This post is full of spoilers and Shinra fangirling, but it’s about the whole game:
Shinra:
First, somebody on the team that wrote material for the Turks and Rufus must be some Shinra fandom veteran grown up with 20 years of fanon. Just Elena as a whole, Rude getting her that ice cream, Rufus in the Gold Saucer harassing fighting Cloud for fun, Dark Star not only obeying Rufus but also Tseng. Rufus complaining that Tseng is being overprotective… (faints) So much crack and shippy moments, I was grinning like an idiot.
(Is crack fic even a thing anymore? It feels like they’ve gotten rarer)
I expected maybe three or four scenes with the Turks, maybe less for Rufus. AND THEN SQUARE SHOVED THEM IN WHEREVER THEY COULD WITHOUT DERAILING THE PLOT. Elena was given so much room to breathe. Same for Rufus. Those little moments with Darkstar. I’m over the moon.
Okay, Rufus, so your father got stabbed, and the first thing you did after that was recording some motion-capturing and dialogue for a Turk recruitment hologram-video-thingy in an abandoned facility? It makes zero sense, but it’s my favourite protorelic mission and I’ll happily add it to my headcanon as a sign that Rufus gave Tseng his okay to recruit more Turks.
(The real answer would probably be automatically generated AI shenanigans, but that’s not very exciting.)
Viceroy Saruf. Just … Rufus, you’re such a cheeky idiot and I love you. Is there any faction in this world you’re not manipulating from the background? I can’t shake the feeling that being the man in the shadows suits you more than actually openly running the company.
Tseng and Reeve were great, I would love more little moments like that, where the Shinra folks just interact outside of action scenes and dramatic moments. The talk Tseng had with Reno and Rufus in Remake after the Sector 7 collapse hit the same note for me. I want more Reeve in part 3.
The scene between Tseng and Aerith at the temple made my eyes misty, but I wish it had been longer. Tseng keeping it short and abruptly leaving to "make a report" was perfect, and I know Cloud being so cold and cutting Aerith off fits his behaviour, but something about the timing just felt off.
I was surprised that Heidegger would take a bullet for Rufus. For President Shinra, absolutely, but Rufus? Hmm… This makes great fanfic material. I’ve read a fanfic before that tried to reimagine the Shinra executives (even Palmer) as more realistic people, and I found it to be really interesting, but then I’m a weirdo with plot bunnies in my head that involve a younger President Shinra, his wife, Veld, Vincent and the older Shinra execs.
I’ve never been a fan of Hojo but his R re-imagining is one of the few that doesn’t work at all for me. OG Hojo was far more unsettling. R!Hojo is just your typical mad scientist, I just can’t care about him, which is a shame, because him taunting Aerith in Remake with how he dissected Ifalna hit me hard.
I still haven’t quite grasped why Rufus is so obsessed with the Promised Land. It probably all comes down to wanting to be more successful than his father, right? I’m probably forgetting or mixing up details from Remake, Rebirth or the OG here, but I assumed that Rufus would outright dismiss it as a fairy tale.
Apparently there is a Midgar DLC for Power Wash Simulator. Square Enix, where is Hitman: Tseng and a version of Yakuza where I can play the Turks dealing with dumb crap doing missions in Midgar? Give us Shinra fans something, I'm still waiting for the EC version of Before Crisis. And I don't even like gacha mobile games. >:(
General game thoughts:
The open world is fantastic, I want to live in Gongaga or Kalm. So pretty. People online seem to hate the Gongaga map, but the soundtrack and the jungle theme made it work for me. I found the gliding parts in Cosmo Canyon far harder to navigate.
Shinra Manor is terrible with Vincent being it’s only redeeming part. The actual mansion looked great (the portrait of President Shinra was a nice touch) but the upper levels being inaccessible and turning it into another lab dungeon was boring. Same for the box throwing mini-game.
Dio the archaeologist turned body-builder is great, but Shinra knowing about the keystone and just not bothering to use it when President Shinra was looking for the Promised Land is a weird plot hole. It would have been a lot easier than trying to convince Aerith to come to them. There were some other little details like that, that bothered me but it’s a blur now.
Remake Barett made me into a Barret fan, Rebirth Nanaki into a Nanaki fan. The writers are genius when it comes to rewriting these characters from the OG. I’m not really bothered Cid not being grumpy and swearing all the time. Him reminiscing about Ifalna was cute. Vincent using his old Turk skills (and having some lingering loyalty to the job?) was cool. Really looking forward to seeing how they’ll handle Lucrecia, the one character in FFVII I'm so conflicted about.
I’m still confused about Aerith’s death scene, especially the cuts where she’s lying in her own blood and then isn’t. I understand that she’s dead in her current reality, but is the scene without blood (and Aerith "waking up" in Cloud’s arms) Cloud’s hallucination or just a different reality? I’m also utterly confused by how many Aeriths we’re dealing with. The Aerith and Cloud we’re playing with and the sleeping Aerith (and Cloud) from the dimension where Zack lives are one and the same? It’s tying my brain into knots, and not in a good way. That’s why I usually can’t stand from stories involving elaborate time travel loops or parallel universes.
(Man, why doesn't Tumblr allow spaces between paragraphs? I hope your eyes aren't bleeding)
I first played the OG as a young teen. Cloud’s mind being fractured and hallucinating was a neat bit of storytelling back then that I hadn’t encountered in video games before. Twenty years later, I’ve dealt with loved ones who are ill but refuse help, and known plenty of people have some form of psychosis or schizophrenia. Whilst I would never seriously compare Cloud’s problems with rl mental illnesses, I found the scenes where he sees Sephiroth and no one else, or is completely out of it hard to stomach. Interacting with somebody who has hallucinations (even "harmless" ones) or paranoid thoughts is unsettling at best, nightmarish at worst. The group trying to passively bear it and keep things together rings very true (especially Tifa) but I’m surprised that even Barett or Yuffie aren’t trying to confront Cloud about his behaviour at least once.
(I tried to format in html, but it somehow looked worse. I'm old. This is how Vincent must feel like every day.)
Dyne, Myrna and Tseng talking to Aerith at the temple had me tearing up, and I lost it at Aerith’s "date" with Cloud in Ch. 14. Hoo boy, I know Aerith stalling off the inevitable just for a little time, was the game having a very direct conversation with the player about what’s going to come, death and how we deal with it. But to me personally, it was more about how one gets caught up in trauma and repeat it over and over in your head, mulling about the point of where things went wrong and what you could have done to prevent it. I know it doesn’t fit, but that’s what my weird brain made out of it. Also Dyne’s and Aerith’s (at the temple) speeches about how they deal (or didn’t) with grief and trauma rang absolutely true.
Damn you, silly anime action game, you really shouldn’t affect me this deeply, but then a lot of fiction hits me harder than it used to.
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Doctor Who, but Chronologically: 37
It's still 1941! And still London! And we're watching Victory of the Daleks.
Funnily enough, for a truly shite episode, it really benefits from this stupid watch order and following the Empty Child. It makes it much more atmospheric, and makes you feel the world war going on outside. That's good, because there's fuck all real urgency going on. Weird episode, really. Weirdly structured.
Anyway, it's Matt Smith and Amy for this one. No Rory. Amy seems new, too - at the end of the episode they have a conversation which boils down to "So you have archnemeses? I didn't realise travelling with you would be so dangerous." It's actually a very stupid conversation because the Doctor's response is "Yes it is dangerous, is that a problem?" and Amy says "Well I'm still here, aren't I?" which might have been a meaningful line if they were back home in her house or something, but as it is, they're standing in a World War Two war room about 70-odd years away from her timeline and have only just wrapped up the adventure, so there is LITERALLY NO CONCEIVABLE WAY SHE WOULDN'T STILL BE HERE.
This is a pattern of trite lines badly delivered that is repeated through the episode.
Plot-wise: Winston Churchill is trying to use Daleks to win the war. Fleabag's dad is here, and claims to have built them. There are three! Last we saw there was only Dalek Caan. Then the Doctor yells at them in a big badly-written grandiose speech that he is the Doctor and they are the Daleks, and that means up in space their space ship can activate some sort of gene bank to resurrect lots of Daleks. The rest of the episode is six new Daleks in Power Ranger colours trying to blow up Fleabag's dad, who it emerges is a robot. The Doctor can either kill the Daleks, or stop the Earth being destroyed. Obviously he chooses the latter.
It's... okay well, there are some great bits, actually. Love all the Troughton nods - nothing has ever scared me as much as that cliffhanger in Evil of the Daleks where the Dalek is just repeating "I am your servant" over and over while the Doctor screams and begs everyone to believe him that it's going to kill everyone, and they were clearly aiming to recreate that scene. They don't entirely manage it, like, but I love the attempt. Love the quotes, too. All great. Also, here's another way this watch order actually benefits this story: we've just seen a Dalek episode where even the slightest attempt at compromise doesn't work, and they'll kill everyone first, thanks to Daleks in Manhattan. So seeing them here, with them claiming to be on our side, is genuinely shocking.
Uhhhh, the entire rest of the episode is shit, though. Fuck I hate WW2 stories. They just nosedive into nauseating jingoism every time. The fawning and sycophantic dick-sucking of Churchill is just gross, given that the man was a monster who merely happened to be on the right side of a war. I hope we one day get a Matt Smith story with Yaz where he tries this schtick with Churchill in front of her, and she's allowed to strangle him with a Union Jack. Meanwhile, this might be one of the worst attempts at a trolley problem I've ever seen? I think? Like the issue is, if the Doctor allows the Dalek ship to be shot down by the RAF and destroyed, they will activate the countdown on the robot and crack the Earth in half. If he leaves, and lets them go off to the future, they won't.
So he goes with option two, BUT immediately pegs it back to the robot, because he knows they're going to activate the countdown anyway. Which they do. So why did you bother calling off the RAF. What was the point. Just fucking shoot them. But no, the plot demanded it I guess, so here we are.
Also the Power Ranger Daleks are just terrible. The bronze ones are so cool, all steampunky and creepy, and then the Power Ranger ones legit look like they're about to break apart and form a Megazord. They don't even have a good silhouette, they sort of bulge weirdly at the back.
BUT ANYWAY let's focus on what's important - the new info!
Because we get quite a bit here. As the Doctor tries to convince Churchill that the Daleks are evil (over the course of about five separate scenes in which they have the same conversation on a loop and you start to wonder when any plot will happen) he turns to Amy.
"Amy, tell him," he says.
"Why would I know?" Amy asks fairly.
"Because you've seen Daleks!" the Doctor exclaims. "Thousands of their ships, trying to conquer your world!"
Omg what??? When???
"Omg what??? When???" says Amy
"OMG WHAT??? HOW???" says the Doctor. "YOU CAN'T JUST GO FORGETTING THAT SHIT???"
So that happened. Meanwhile, the Doctor gets a right cob on with a Dalek and starts boasting about killing them.
"I sent you all back into the void to save the universe!" he says.
Yet more plot threads. I can't believe there are so many. Almost like this is a stupid watch order etc.
Oh, and at the end of the episode, the Doctor reminds us that Amy has unnaturally forgotten the Daleks invading her planet, and we're treated to a weird crack in the wall. I wonder if that's relevant?
“She” (an unknown person) is returning (perhaps River returned as Missy. Maybe Me? Maybe Clara???!)
There is something on Donna’s back
An entire planet, Pyrovilia, just… disappeared, somehow. (Maybe because the TARDIS is exploding??? Saturnine was also lost, and that WAS because of the TARDIS exploding. The lion man’s planet was also lost but he was a bit of a knob about it if I’m honest.)
Amy is maybe dead (she’s not)
The Doctor has been cubed (he’s out, but how?)
River is possibly blown up  (unless she’s Missy. Nope: she is definitely not blown up)
The TARDIS has blown up  (It’s fine now. Except it’s sort of melting now because it’s corrupted, but it’s fine again)
The universe appears to have ended  (the universe is back again)
The Doctor has employed(?) Nardole
(And Nardole was “reassembled???” Nardole had glass nipples and invisible hair?? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE)
There’s a vault in the TARDIS and it contains Missy but we don’t know why (sometimes she knocks for the bants)
There’s an immortal Viking girl now. Her name is Me and she’s now looking after the people the Doctor abandons
Why was Rory entirely unconcerned by the entire world suddenly going silent when that is Not Normal and should have been, at the very least, extremely disconcerting?
What did the Doctor do to Queen Lizzie One?
Why is Amy seeing a one-eyed woman in a vanishing window? (She’s with the Silents, but we don’t know why Amy saw her)
Why is Amy’s pregnancy inconclusive? (Maybe because the baby had Time Lord DNA?)
Who is Sarah-Jane Smith?
How is the Doctor Bill’s teacher and why/where does he have an office?
What is going on with the Cyber War and the Cyberium???
What happened with the Other Cyber War?
What happened with the Third War that deleted the void?
Why does Rose seem particularly important?
What order do these Doctors go in? (Eccleston, Tennant, uncertain, Smith, Capaldi, Whittaker)
Which companion just… forgot the Doctor, and how?
Yaz and Vinder are about to die as Mori/Mwri/Muuri
There is a Lupari shield around Earth.
What’s a Time War?
What’s the Rift?
What’s Bad Wolf?
In which war did the Doctor become a war criminal, and how?
Who is the Master?
Why has Amy forgotten Rory? NEW INFO: how did she forget a Dalek invasion?
Is Rory plastic or not?
Why is the Doctor sulking on a cloud?
How exactly does the Doctor have a cloud?
What exactly happened with Strax to, uh, tame him?
Which friend killed Strax?
Which friend brought Strax back?
Where did this lesbian lizard and human couple come from?
What happened with Clara as Souffle Girl and the Daleks?
How does Clara actually join?
Why so many Claras?
Why is Missy apparently in robo-heaven?
Why is probably!Missy pushing Clara and the Doctor together?
What is Trensilor and what happened there?
Who is Handles?
The Doctor is about to be dissolved by a beautiful geode man
The universe is being crushed by the Flux
Will the Doctor open the fobwatch?
Sontarans are invading Earth again
Who is Kate?
Who is Osgood? Another name of Clara’s again?
The fuck is the deal with the Grand Serpent
Does Martha get to go to an ice cream planet with 12-fingered massage aliens?
How did the Doctor forget Clara?
Who is Bill’s puddle girlfriend Heather?
How did Nardole die?
When does Bill get Cyberman-ed and die?
When does the Doctor shrink and enter a Dalek called Rusty?
Whittaker is falling to her death rn
Was that ring relevant?
Does anyone know the Doctor’s name?
When did Yaz talk to Dan about fancying the Doctor?
When did Dan talk to the Doctor about fancying Yaz?
What’s happening with the bees?
What happened with Donna’s ex and a giant spider?
What war wiped out the Daleks, and is it one of the ones already mentioned?
What did the Doctor mean when he said “The (Daleks) always live, while I lose everything?”
If Dalek Caan is the last Dalek left why are there more now?
How did the rest of the Time Lords die?
How and why did Amy melt?
What’s the question that will make silence fall?
Why do the Silents… want silence to fall?
How and why are Silents at war with the Doctor when he… hasn’t even heard of them?
How does Hitler get out of the cupboard?
What’s the significance of fish fingers and custard?
Why does the Doctor feel guilt about Rose, Martha and Donna?
What happened with the space whale?
When does Rory defend Amy for 2000 years?
How does the Doctor survive River
How does he erase himself from history
Did Captain Jack lose his memories to the same people as the Doctor? What did he lose?
When did the Doctor send the Daleks into a void to save the universe?
What's with the weird crack in the wall and is it affecting memories?
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feyres-divorce-lawyer · 3 months
Text
@looseleaflettuce you absolute god you.
QUEUE THE LIVE REACTIONS
I miss the pain the moment it’s gone
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 6
oh. well then🙂 such a small line, but hit me in the chest fr
I claw and scratch and dig my way out until I can smell the familiar scent of wet dirt, the scent of my life spilled into it. Until I can feel the soil under my fingernails, digging into the ground rather than the endless darkness, the grass between my fingers instead of those snaking tendrils of nothing.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 7
IS SHE DIGGING OUT OF HER FUCKING GRAVE???!? WOAG
I was plunged into the nothing, while I was watching my own siblings be killed
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 8
aw man😕
My parents stand in front of me
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 9
NO! NOT THE MAKERS
her hands shaking as she tucks the strands behind her ears, exposing her dark face to the light of the moon.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 9
bitch why the fuck are you shaking, you just killed your kids ya degenerate
The three lifeless bodies lie bled out on the grass to my right. My siblings. I’jam, Rajem, and Solweh. My siblings. My family. Dead. Killed by the two people meant to protect us, life taken by the ones that gave it to us.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 9
tears in my eyes. LETTY WHY🤧
My mother blinks, her fear quickly overshadowed by a wall of discontent. Of failure. A sliver of determination shining through.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 9
WDYM DETERMINATION! UR DOUBLING DOWN?? YOU’RE GONNA TRY AGAIN?? HUH😀
like she has no right to speak it
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 10
you tell her luna
As though a steady stream trickled from them while it flowed relentlessly from me.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 10
ME A SPY FORESHADOWING🧐
Their ritual gone so awry
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 11
istg if they killed their kids for power, i’m gonna 🔫
paralyzing our bodies and minds but leaving us to hear and see what they were doing to us.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 12
AND WORST PARENTS OF THE YEAR AWARDS GO TO THESE FUCKERS
I had tried to escape, to run into the village and gather help for my siblings, but I had not made it very far at all
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 12
wow i am sure she will perfectly recognize she had no fault in this and will not feel any guilt whatsoever🙂
They killed me last, letting me lie there helplessly to watch, making sure I watched as they killed my siblings
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 13
this will have no consequences on her psyche in the future☺️
not wanting to stop my sister at all as she rips into his neck with her teeth, silencing his screams as she holds down his thrashing body until he stops moving completely. Until she pulls back with a gasping breath, a wild gleam in her eyes as she wipes the wave of red from her mouth with the back of her hand though it still drips down her chin and down her neck, merging with her own blood on her chest.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 15-16
HE HAD IT COMING. HE HAD IT COMING. HE ONLY HAD HIMSELF TO BLAME. (also hotttt)
The four imprints of our lives lost in those very spots. The grass wilted and died in our spots, leaving brown imprints of us in the earth
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 19-20
me when rebirth symbolism
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I am no longer human. I do not know what I am.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 21
you’re my bbg.
I leave the clearing, towards the direction of Ra’jem and I’jam’s departure.
Cusp Of The Mend | Ch. 1 ~ Pg. 22
damn you gon do solweh like that😭
Review Time!
Beautifully written🤌🏾 I could really grasp Luna’s desperation clawing away from the darkness, which I’m assuming was the magic that would’ve taken her life and granted it to her parents. I actually thought she would already be a vampire, so this was a nice surprise! It was a great opening chapter; a well established setting, the inciting incident allows for the reader to make a million inferences on how the plot will develop, and there’s enough characterization to gauge Luna’s personality and how vampirism may change her! Next Up: Ch. 2 ~ Starvation♥️
also a meme for you , letty
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fuck around and find out igz
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thegeminisage · 6 months
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star trek: the motion picture rewrite
star trek the motion picture was bad so i'm fixing it. here's how
problem #1: everybody got interesting setups and nobody got any payoffs.
problem #2: ilia and decker were just not that interesting (sorry ilia and decker) and they either needed to be more interesting or have less screen time or both.
problem #3: it took more than half the film for the enterprise to even leave earth. this seems like poor pacing, which the overall film also suffers from.
problem #4: those damn 20-minute cgi scenery sequences. enough is enough.
sorry in advance but this post won't make much sense if you haven't seen the first star trek movie, "star trek: the motion picture." i don't have the time or patience to re-explain the entire plot! the novelization also ties into this but i do explain some of that.
MAIN PLOT
it wasn't a GREAT plot but i'm keeping it mostly the same, except a few changes:
the enterprise leaves much earlier in the film. all the interpersonal drama can happen ON THE WAY to v'ger and it would make very little difference to the main script and series of events, but the reminds that they're only x hours away from interception would help keep things tense and moving along. also, it would get spock in here earlier. we went a LONG time without seeing him.
the engines can still fail at the outset and get fixed by spock, but it's kind of weird that he shows up out of nowhere. i would change this to kirk leaving him messages - and spock finally answering at the exact right moment (more on this in spock's section)
less of those long cgi sequences, obviously. the enterprise deserves all the fanfare in the world but we do have other stuff to do. maybe we can learn a little about v'ger through the ilia-probe in bits and pieces before we get there rather than learning all at once at the end - the book sort of did that and it was better. but i think we just need to cut them to allow time for a LITTLE more interpersonal drama - the balance of interpersonal stuff to plot stuff was WAY off, even after you consider how the tos episodes are somtimes
i don't think decker should fuck the probe.
the book and movie seem to disagree on whether the ilia-probe really "is" ilia or a very convincing copy. i think we would do better to leave it open, as scifi so often is, because both answers feel slightly wrong to me
kirk just taking the ship at the end and going "ok thattaway" was heartwarming but lacks any semblance of logic. rather than beaming down to debrief, though - in case they don't let him go back up - i'd like to see him doing a power move where the required personnel for his debrief come to HIM. and THEN when the dust clears he can go "thattaway"
CHARACTER ARC: KIRK
there's a lot more on this in the book than the movie, but kirk begins this story three years post his five year journey. in the movie he's framed as "washed up" but the book sometimes implies he's "damaged." starfleet offered him the promotion to admiral to keep him out of space because his was the first ship to come back relatively intact after a five-year and they're using him as a poster boy for their pro-space propaganda. (kirk wholly disagrees with "intact"; he lost a total of 94 crew members over those five years and objects strongly to his new legendary fame.) it's worth noting that bones begged him NOT to take the promotion and he and some other officers actually RESIGNED over it.
also, for the first year back on earth, starfleet totally just SENT HIM A WOMAN? to like keep him distracted and "happy." he got honeypotted into not going back out into space. how many planets have tried to trap people by making them happy? how many times has kirk refused to stay in such a place because it leaves him nothing to strive for? and then, irony of horrific ironies, he was trapped on earth. he doesn't realize this woman was basically sent to pacify him until the very beginning of the film/book. anyway, this woman's name is lori, she's gonna matter just a little bit later. after she left, kirk got pushed into a desk job he was utterly fucking miserable in. he notes that it was the only time he ever ignored bones's advice and he suffered greatly for it.
when the "intruder" (v'ger, obvs) is revealed to be approaching earth (via brain implants? stupid, let's just switch to everyone seeing it on TV), kirk, for totally normal reasons, jumps at the chance to take the enterprise away from decker ostensibly because he's got more experience but also because (the book gets into this) he feels like he's been jerked around on a string for the last three years by the admirals (specifically he names nogura to give us a face but they were all in on it) and also that he's totally dead inside. he has to guilt trip bordering on BLACKMAIL nogura into letting him back aboard (ie bringing up the fact that he placated kirk with a woman and sweet promises instead of like...actually caring about his PTSD). we're keeping that part because it's sexy and fun.
the question the movie seems to be asking is, "is jim kirk too old and feeble to captain the enterprise again?" i would like to posit instead we go with "is jim kirk too DAMAGED to captain the enterprise again?" they really put him through the wringer in season 3 in particular and that total nervous breakdown from the romulan espionage episode was supposed to have been REAL before they changed it, so i'm sticking it in that three year timeskip instead. in the book, jim fucks up several times - can't figure out his seatbelt, gets lost, and notably fails to be able to save his former honeypot lori and his new vulcan first officer (off-brand spock) during a transport malfunction - they get rearranged horrifically and then die right in front of him. rather than frame this as jim being old and out of practice i'd like to frame it around the totally untreated PTSD of space and his five-year finally catching up to him.
the book ALSO gets into how jim feels more at home in space, how being away from it gives him physical symptoms almost like withdrawal, and how he felt he has been brought back from the dead and out of a miserable, meaningless life when stepping aboard for the first time. IMPORTANT FOR LATER.
at the same time though i think we might greatly benefit from mixed feelings - perhaps JIM HIMSELF has wondered if he was too damaged to get back out there - if, after everything, part of him wasn't a little hesitant to go back out into the unknown and risk putting himself through the kind of hell he got put through in some of those later tos episodes. maybe he wanted the captaincy to prove it to himself, yes, but also it was something he was determined to do (even though part of him was a little worried about doing it) because he thought he was the only one that COULD. there's a hidden element in this film of facing one's fears to benefit emotionally, so it would be important to squeeze something like this in, even if it's only in hints or light implications.
the ultimate answer to jim's question of course is that he ISN'T too damaged to be back out in space, especially not if spock and bones and the others are out there with him. but to get into that we have to move to...
CHARACTER ARC: DECKER AND ILIA
i'm putting these 2 together because (sorry) i don't care very much. side characters in trek are always supposed to just highlight the main characters anyway, right? again, i'm so sorry. anyway so. in the movie and especially the book, ilia is pretty constantly sexualized - deltan females and their pheromones or whatever - and she has very little personality. decker is mostly just mad (justifiably) that kirk stole his job after 18 months of prep and sad that ilia got zapped, but we feel neither of these things very strongly. the movie doesn't even MENTION decker's father killing himself in space* which is a huge waste of potential when you consider the name of the game re: kirk's arc, at least in the book, is PTSD.
*matt decker, will decker's father, is the captain from doomsday machine (consider this a spoiler warning): when a giant machine showed up and engaged in battle with his ship, the constellation, he evacuated his crew to a nearby planet and stayed behind, planning to go down with the ship. unfortunately the machine was a planet-eater, and ate the planet his crew was on, so his crew all died while he listened to them beg him for help, and he later tried to suicide bomb the machine with the enterprise and then later one of its shuttles, which tragically ended in his mostly-pointless death. kirk did at least use the idea to suicide bomb the machine with the damaged constellation and have himself beamed out just in time though, and he had the record made that matt decker died in the line of duty, omitting some of his shadier actions so as not to stain his memory or whatever.
ANYWAY, i think the only way to make decker and ilia interesting is to foil them with kirk and spock. decker is who kirk was before his five-year: smart, capable, ready to take on anything and chomping at the bit to get out there and bite off as much as he can chew and then some. also, he's emotionally distant from women because of his status as captain/his need to not be tied down so he can explore space.
ILIA on the other hand is more like spock - she has limited telepathic abilities, she is othered and sometimes sexualized by the people around her because of her VULCAN BIOLOGY sorry because of her race, and she has a passion for learning and pursuits of intellect. and also a semi-formal telepathic link with decker - they had met before, and were preparing to bond (the way a vulcan might), and then decker more or less got cold feet and left her at the altar because his own passion for being in space left him unable to commit. but she WENT AFTER HIM (important for later) and wound up as the enterprise navigator.
for decker, instead of showing kirk up once near the beginning, apologizing, and gradually learning to get along with him, i think i'd like him to be showing kirk up a lot - being subtly snide when kirk can't work his seatbelt, for example. this film has no real antagonist aside from an incomprehensible alien entity, but we could bring a little humanity to it by having decker justifiably resent not only being confronted with ilia again but also having his captaincy snatched away from him after EIGHTEEN. MONTHS. of prep. that's some serious bullshit.
but, while decker IS younger and more familiar with the enterprise's redesign, while he's had more recent space hours and suffers from none of kirk's PTSD, what he lacks is experience - this was the whole basis of kirk taking the fucking ship to begin with, and the movie as it is kind of totally invalidates that plot point. to that end, near the end of the film when they're in v'ger, i would make a bigger deal out of kirk knowing better than to perform the scan - because that's what got the klingons killed (when v'ger interpreted their scan as hostile). decker, shaken, realizes his own hasty decision would have resulted in all of them dying horrifically, and rather than kirk grudgingly respecting decker first, we get it the other way around - decker grudgingly respecting kirk, and kirk returning that respect after decker stops being an asshole. this does the job of helping the AUDIENCE respect kirk after spending so much time wondering if he was indeed too washed up and damaged to do the job, and it helps to begin to warm us up to decker too.
also, it would be fun to have decker overhear bones arguing with kirk or spock or even talking to chapel or something, to know that kirk was thought too washed up EVEN BY THE ADMIRALS (who decker does respect bc he doesn't know better yet), and then for decker to realize later kirk got jerked around - and maybe realize, once he begins to see kirk as a person instead of an obstacle, that something like that might be in his own future even if he succeeds in almost every possible way, as kirk had. we might even use this to get into decker's dad basically killing himself after losing his crew - it can go other ways than right for captains. it can also go so, so, so wrong. (this would require some exposition, though, since we can't expect everyone to have both seen the episode and remember the details.)
another moment that wasn't used to its full potential is when decker basically has to honeypot the ilia probe - this is extremely difficult on him emotionally, and kirk knows all about the perils of emotionally difficult honeypot missions (sorry that i'm linking to this twice). i think decker realizing kirk has done this same kind of thing like a zillion times and that's part of what led to his breakdown gives him respect not just for KIRK but for the position of captain itself - he would have no choice but to do this to protect 500 lives, if it were him. you don't get to tap out when you're captain. and this is good for kirk too, because in sympathizing with decker (and the horrific situation of having to honeypot the image of his dead lover) he can learn to sympathize with himself, and forgive himself for being at less than his best during his own worst moments - some of them during the five-year, some of them after, when he felt weak and without purpose. it also gives him the job of connecting the audience to decker - through him, through thinking of decker as a younger version of him, we can forgive decker for being an asshole earlier and sympathize with his pain. and he becomes someone we root for.
as for ilia - i think she should have gotten to yell at decker rather than passively act like he wasn't even there and hide her pain. her pain at being left behind and betrayed and having to find her own way could mirror spock's (more on this in a sec) but it could also mirror v'ger and its abandonment issues, even though she was abandoned by a boyfriend and not god. there's only so much you can do with truly misogynistic writing but she could've been likable!! her sitch and spock's are the same and she gets to complain while he refuses! even one iota of a personality would have helped so much.
ALSO, on that point, at least one conversation between her and spock would have done a lot to make her more interesting too, because then she would be adjacent to him. spock, too, left his home planet to chase after a space captain he was in um a relationship with, and that bit of kinship ("your answers are not here") could lead to a bonding moment - i think spock would respect what she's doing and that would lend her a lot of credit in the eyes of the audience. much like v'ger, much like spock, ilia has left her home to find out who she is, and part of that answer lies within emotion, within the people she loves: in this case, decker. i would also, if we HAVE to fridge her (DO WE?? more on this in the ending section), choose to have her take a blow meant for decker - her last act being one of love, because the film IS ultimately about love's importance, even in spite of all the pain it also causes (see: decker in his grief).
which leads us to...
CHARACTER ARC: BONES
we have to have a brief interlude here for bones. unfortunately, bones in this movie is little more than an extremely loveable afterthought. while fixing his ENTIRE deal is out of the scope of this tumblr post, what i WOULD do is give him more screentime by having both his AND spock's lives upended by the same event: kirk, the Main Character(tm), choosing to take the admiral stripes and "abandon" them.
i think theres enough evidence in tos to argue the case that bones places a lot of importance on jim and spock's lives - he claims to hate space, but he never resigns, and he finds meaning in taking care of them, even if (to my own interpretation), he can sometimes feel like a third wheel to their legendary "friendship" (so legendary that it's historically important both in-universe and in real life). when kirk agrees to "retire" and let starfleet make him their poster boy because he has PTSD and burnout, bones CANONICALLY objects to what starfleet is trying to do to him so strongly that he literally resigns. again, kirk notes in the book that "retiring" is the only time he ever ignored bones's advice and he came regret it deeply. so kirk needs bones back - in the book, he says outright he needs bones back because he, gaslit, cannot trust himself to be making solid calls emotionally, and he wants bones to call him out if he steps out of line.
for fun, i think bones should be a little more pissed about being "drafted" and like genuinely grumpy rather than fond and gruff - at least, until kirk apologizes. he tells bones all about being yanked around by the admirals and being honeypotted and how much he regretted not listening to his advice...and the gaslighting, not bones's medical expertise, is why kirk feels he needs bones now - why all of earth needs him, because this is a mission to save the entire planet. i think bones LOVES to be needed and especially by jim and/or spock, and he of course has a natural desire to caretake, so after the apology he could soften up to "gruff." he found meaning in what he was doing on earth, but he finds meaning in this too, and kirk telling him that of COURSE he can leave if he wants solidifies his decision to stay, even at the end of the film when the immediate threat has passed. put simply: he loves kirk and spock, and, like them, he wants the three of them to stay together, even though they previously broke his heart.
i think also that once spock comes aboard this gives bones a second job, which is to poke holes in spock's outward unemotional demeanor, which he genuinely is doing from a place of love (since it was bones who said the release of emotions is healthy). instead of standing around and being a lovable and nostalgic set piece, this would give him an actual purpose and an arc, even if his arc (healing spock via negging, healing jim via not gaslighting people) is holding up the other characters.
and speaking of spock...
CHARACTER ARC: SPOCK
post five-year, spock goes back to vulcan to undergo the kolinahr, a ritual meant to purge all remaining emotion from vulcans. he does this because he detests his human half and the many weaknesses and challenges it brings him etc etc but i also would like it if he does this because kirk retires - he has no logical, ready-made excuse to be around kirk and bones anymore, and just like kirk, he truly felt at home on the enterprise, where people valued him for his skill and what he could do rather than what he was (or wasn't). (this sentiment from spock is semi-canonical - it's in william shatner's tarsus iv novel, collision course.) kirk and bones are both an important part of his support system and it is crumbling without any way to save it - of COURSE he chooses not to feel emotion rather than face that pain. every human being ever has wished at some point or another they could numb themselves rather than hurt, and spock is half human, too. (that said, i would also not complain if kohlinahr was spock's way to escape the trauma of what the five-year did to HIM, making him feel emotions differently than what he believed was acceptable, changing him fundamentally as a person, and kirk only agreed to resign because space wasn't worth it without spock aka because he got dumped, but this is a minor detail.)
while on vulcan, kirk, equally adrift, sends him messages (this does admittedly make more sense if kirk only resigned because spock did) - but spock is potentially kind of mad at him (if kirk resigned first) and also trying not to feel anything, so he ignores those and goes out into the desert to get rid of all his gross icky feelings. when the masters read his mind and see that jim accidentally contacted him telepathically (which...girl WHAT was that all about did they bond fr during amok time) and that "his answer is not here," he reads or listens to all the messages at once (maybe including the deleted one spock prime had from aos...ouch), gets emotional (or resists, but it's a near thing), and realizes that if he can't purge kirk from his mind he has to at least find out why. the last message can be about the intruder (v'ger) and their fucked up engines, spock can feel reluctant concern and race to the rescue.
spock is initially very very cold to his old shipmates because he is trying to hold onto his logic and not allow the emotion back in his mind, but absolutely nobody is having this. like in the movie, kirk and bones drag him away to the lounge to interrogate him (he should admit to feeling kirk telepathically here just as he did in the book - i don't know that i'd go into the whole bond business in this movie because that's just writing fanfiction and is also a lot of exposition but i would never deny fanfic writers their fodder).
later, after talking with ilia, who did a brave thing (in spock's eyes, anyway, because he is terrified of what HE'S doing) by chasing down her man to give him an earful, spock is troubled, which prompts bones to start going IS THAT AN EMOTION I SEE MR SPOCK? (and make him more troubled). i think spock grieves ilia's death in his own way because of how much like him she is, or was. all of this culminates in his choice to attempt to mind-meld with v'ger, in the end - if he isn't a human and isn't a vulcan, WHAT is he? if he can't live with the emotion and he can't purge it, what is he supposed to do? if he dies in the mindmeld so be it, but at least he will have been useful - iirc, i think it was roddenberry or leonard nimoy who said that was always a primary motivation of his.
of course, AFTER the mindmeld, he does indeed realize that logic is pointless without emotion, and that he's been adrift not BECAUSE of his emotions but because of his refusal to deal with them and his refusal to feel. so spock, too, will decide to stay at the end of the film.
side bar on the scene where spock cries for v'ger: it's kind of dumb because v'ger is so unknowable. i think spock crying could be a bigger deal - maybe with happiness, as he holds jim's hand, or maybe when he thinks they're all gonna die (kirk says when he sees spock crying "it's not for us" but like what if it was though). i'd prefer him to cry after he finishes laughing post mindmeld of course but either instance could work.
and finally...
THE ENDING
i don't mind the ending in its plot - that v'ger really was just looking for its creator, as a child looks for its parent - but i really want the question of whether or not the probe IS ILIA to remain open. if you make an exact copy of a person that truly believes it is the original, is it? if it's indistinguishable from who ilia used to be even to itself, is it ilia? i like leaving this open because i DON'T like fridging her, but i also think it stretches believability to have this machine magically extract a consciousness and put it in a robot when we had a whole episode of s1 revolve around this exact same plot twist (is chapel's now-android fiance really still her fiance just because he thinks he is?)
it should be spock's idea to have a human join with v'ger - it was the joining with humans that ultimately led to HIS feeling emotions he was unable to ignore, which ultimately led to his understanding and acceptance of emotion and its value in general. spock would see the ilia probe as still being ilia, but in distress, as he was when he came aboard the enterprise, as v'ger is now. and he knows what fixed him (holding jim's hand lol sorry i mean accepting his emotions) and what would fix her.
and then of course decker does join with her - volunteers, insists even. i think he takes the chance on optimism and hope - something kirk lost along the way due to various traumas - but also because this film is about the importance of love, and he can't bear to live without his, even in facsimile. it's partially a sacrifice too though - decker's life and body as he knows it in exchange for the earth's safety - because that's what kirk would have done, what he HAS done. he did learn from kirk after all.
and kirk learns from him too - decker, who by now will know about the awful years the brass put kirk through prior to the start of the film, would tell kirk to give 'em hell, like it's something that can actually be done, because at his heart he's an optimist, and that's something kirk sorely needs emotionally at this low point in his life. a very gen-z-saving0the-millennials moment. (apologies to both gen z and millennials.)
so after the dust has settled, kirk, who has just saved earth, can basically ask for anything he wants, and what he wants is not to get sent out to pasture again. so that leads into him refusing to leave the ship and letting the admirals and everyone else who wants to debrief him come to HIM instead of him going down - he finally has back what he needed, which was simply control and agency over his own life, and his loved ones - since spock and bones decided to stay aboard. i would have liked some challenging action moment prior to the ending with the ilia-probe and decker included, a moment to highlight that kirk has still got it (kind of like his badass moment in the deadly years where he saves the ship in .2 seconds once they cure his dementia). but insisting that they see v'ger directly and not deal with its probe is okay too.
FINALLY, after we've established that kirk is In Control again and not just like, stealing a starship, we can do his scene where he begins a new five-year mission, and when directing sulu, says, "out there - thattaway."
THEMES
HOPEFULLY this ties together the various themes and foils in everybody's arc - the main ones being the importance of dealing with emotions, even painful ones, the importance of love, and the question "who am i?" - the theme of seeking answers
kirk wants to know who he is - is he still a starship captain who braved the unknown and returned alive? he tried to numb himself (or rather starfleet tried to numb him) after his five-year mission with a woman and a desk job and it didn't help - he had to risk getting back out there to do himself any good at all.
spock asks if he is a vulcan or a human, and seeks to answer the question by purging emotion, but must answer it by accepting the emotion instead - and he learns this from v'ger, who is asking the same question and cannot answer it without emotion anymore than spock could. spock is and always will be both vulcan AND human and no amount of resistance on his part can change that.
bones feels adrift without loved ones to take care of - who is HE if kirk won't even listen to his advice not to "retire" - and of course he is someone who takes care of others. which is a little sad because it's not a deeper arc, but it sort of rhymes with his whole deal in tos and there ARE five other movies. there's also a little bit in there about being willing to try again after your heart's been broken, which is also something kirk and spock are struggling with, to have the trio's arc rhyming with each other.
decker asking who he is - is he a real captain or a psycho case like his dad and kirk, is he someone who could have been ilia's husband - and ilia wondering if she is someone who could have been his wife, and later the PROBE wondering if it's truly ilia or not. MORE questions that have to be answered by overcoming fear of emotional pain - decker takes the chance and joins with her to answer both his own question, and the probe's - and, of course, v'ger's.
THIS CONCLUDES. my movie rewrite. i am so glad to have gotten it off my chest, which is the main reason i wrote it, but i don't think it's terribly popular...so if you actually read this whole thing you're a rock star. okay BYE!!!
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chayannecraft · 3 months
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Breakfast Trio as Spiderverse kids au/hc’s LETS GO:
Sunny:
- Spider name is Sun-Spider
- on top of all the normal spiders, she has the ability to control and manifest light, and by extension darkness. They often use it to be dramatic, but it works great in a fight too. It can blind or distract enemies.
- is the daughter of Mr. rich guy Tubbo, and thus funds the groups superhero-ing adventures and anything they might need. They steal his credit card or just ask really nicies
- Has the most elaborate spider-suit out of everybody, because she refuses to fight crime without looking good. It’s got a puffy dress and heels, with maybe a boa scarf. She also somewhat managed to drag the other two into being fashionable too so they’re all cute together :)
- is the best at dealing with the public, because she already does it a lot in her normal life
(The other two kids/more details under the cut)
Empanada:
- Spider name is Sugar-Spider or Sugar-Weaver
- on top of all the normal spider powers, she has the power to create anything out of condensed (pink!) energy. Prime examples of this are Gwen from Ben 10 or Atomic Eve. She often uses this to make platforms, weapons, or create anything to keep the public safe.
- However, can’t make any weapons without knowing which individual parts interact with each other to cause the weapon to function, so she just. has a bunch of books and research on different weapons. She’s somehow convinced everybody this is a phase.
- Honestly also probably uses a parasol as a weapon as well because she is also fashionable (not to the extent of glamour that Sunny has, but enough to be cute) and thinks keeping with the brand is a fun little extra thing.
- is the heart and soul of the group. Keeps them motivated and keeps their morale up!! She’s a very essential part of the group and often reminds them both why they’re saving people.
Pepito
- Spider name is (drumroll) Spider-Kid (it’s a work in progress for me ok)
- A bit more jaded than normal Pepito: is still Roier’s child, but has since given up on Roier ever actually being Pepito’s father, and avoids him as much as possible. Often stays over at Empanadas or Sunnys home instead of Pepito’s own.
- Pepito’s house has Roier and Cellbit, as well as a revolving cycle of Jaiden, Richarlyson, and others present in it at all times. This does not stop Pepito from avoiding the house and leaving Pepito’s room as an untouched Time Capsule.
- tries to focus on helping people in an emergency but will not hesitate to get involved or beat the shit out of somebody if the others need help/a distraction
- has no extra special powers like the other two, but is bonded to the venom symbiote (it was a HELLISH two to three weeks but it worked out in the end ^_^ ) (The inclusion of venom symbiote was based on Roier’s purgatory skin)(also it based it’s suit appearance off of Cellbit just so you guys know maybe I’ll upload it)
- i know I just dropped an entire load of tragic backstory, but Pepito is still very much Pepito, who helps Pepito’s friends in any way Pepito can and believes in each of them.
Extra plot details:
- takes place in Quesdilla City (Like NYC but named Quesdilla)
- I don’t know how old the breakfast trio are canonically, but here they’re like 14 to 15.
- Every character and egg is also present here, and has a connection together relating to The Federation that is pretty negative. Breakfast Trio did not know about this in an effort to keep them safe. Kind of backfired.
- adding onto that, the ordo theoritas is a group they made in order to keep each other and the eggs safe from the federation.
- The Purgatory Eye fuck is here and is one of the main villains for the Spider-Kids, you know, the type that absolutely humbles them and then they sit there like WUH OH. UM. UH OH!!!
- They kick it’s ass eventually but my god is it a whole exhausting trip.
- I know for a fact the Spider-Kids identities get publicly leaked and it causes a LOT of panic and confusion. Can’t decide if this is as The Eye is fucking it up in antagonist-ville or a bit after it gets defeated. This plotpoint is mostly for DRAMA and PAIN. They run away from their homes and to a warehouse they reestablished as their base to PANIC.
- Breakfast trio love each other so much. They went into this together they work on it together, they fight together. They know each others strengths and weaknesses and cover according but they are most of all filled with love for each other. They would do anything for the other. Each of their motivations are a weave of string tied to their souls and tied to each other.
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this isn’t about the hogs…
I… want to get into the Hazbin Hotel fandoms but idk if I wanna actually watch the show cuz I’m a kid and like I don’t care about swearing but yknow…
and like maybe I should just watch comps of it for an understanding of the characters… but like also I need plot n stuff and I’ve seen you reblog it so like
idk
can you give me a rundown of the show?
if you can’t/don’t want to just answer this ask with no or smth
please and thank you
(Don’t make a hazbin sonic au k?)
You got it! I do want to warn you tho: The show contains violence, death, abuse, sex, and suicidal ideation.
The prologue is just Lucifer likes free thinking, so he steals Adam's wife Lilith and then they trick Adam and his new wife Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, and now hell exists.
The princess of Hell, Charlie, is trying to redeem sinners to avoid overpopulation without the same cruel tactics of keeping the population down that Heaven uses- mass extermination once a year. To do this, she opens a hotel called the Happy Hotel that rehabilitates sinners, that she runs with the help of her girlfriend Vaggie and her friend Angel Dust.
Unfortunately for her image, Angel is currently engaged in a turf war with a demon named Sir Pentious, fighting alongside his best friend Cherri Bomb. Which. Yknow. Not exactly helping him redeem himself.
After a bit, a fearsome demon named Alastor appears at the door, offering to help Charlie run the hotel- not to rehabilitate sinners, but to be entertained when said sinners fail. He introduces Niffty to be the maid, and Husk to be the bartender (who Angel immediately begins flirting with). Alastor beats up Sir Pentious, renames the hotel to Hazbin instead of Happy, and that's the end of the pilot.
I cant explain every single episode in great detail- especially if you decide to watch it- so these descriptions are gonna be much more brief. 1 paragraph per episode, MAX.
Charlie's dad, Lucifer, lets her go to a meeting with Heaven, where she's introduced to Adam- the first man and head of the exterminators. He disagrees with her plan to redeem sinners, since he doesn't think they can change, and moves the next extermination to half a year from now.
Sir Pentious returns for another fight with Alastor. We're next introduced to the Vees- three powerful demons named Vox, Valentino, and Velvette. While Vox and Alastor have a rivalry, Pentious has actually been sent into the Hotel by the Vees to act like he wants redemption, but actually just to infiltrate them. After Vox tells him to kill himself (im not kidding), Charlie allows him a chance to redeem himself, which he takes. Vaggie and Angel are pretty pissed about this but it's fine
Alastor goes to a meeting with the other overlords (just demons that have massive power, specifically over certain territories), where Velvette starts talking trash to Carmilla- an overlord who also sells weapons. Velvette accuses her of killing an angel that was found headless in Hell after an extermination, and later it's revealed to Vaggie that she DID kill the angel to protect her children. She doesn't want the secret to slip, because if Heaven finds out, it means war.
Angel is revealed to be in an abusive relationship with Valentino. He's a porn star, and Val is his director and boss. Charlie, blissfully unaware, tries to get him off work for the day to do trust exercises, but Val threatens Angel that he'll hurt Charlie if he can't make her leave. Angel lashes out, shoots the porn, and returns to the hotel bar with Husk to drink away his sorrows. Husk tries to get him to open up, so he leaves for another bar. Husk follows him there too, and he explains that Angel isn't the only one who's damaged and that they're both losers.
Lucifer shows up and is depressed, and he has a rivalry with Alastor about who is the better dad. Al's friend Mimzy shows up out of nowhere, lore-dumps, and then it turned out she just went to the hotel to escape the cops because she stole a car. Alastor politely tells her to fuck off. Charlie and Lucifer have a conversation about how the hotel could work, with Charlie pushing Lucifer to let her go to Heaven and try to make her argument in person. He caves, and Charlie excitedly tells Vaggie she's coming too.
Charlie and Vaggie arrive in Heaven, and are introduced to an angel named Sera and her daughter Emily. Charlie and Emily agree that sinners should have the chance to be redeemed, which Adam again shuts down, saying that they had their chance. Vaggie is revealed by Adam to be a fallen angel- and not just an angel, but one of the exterminators, punished to life in Hell because she saved a child. Charlie begins fearing for what else Vaggie could be lying about, but before she can panic more, the opposing viewpoints turn Heaven and Hell to battle. Also, the whole time this is going on, Angel, Husk, Niffty, Pentious, and Cherri are getting drinks, and seeing the supposed "redeemed souls" drinking is actually what sells it to the angels that they can't be saved.
Everyone prepares for the battle. Charlie and Vaggie make up, Vaggie trains with Carmilla, Angel, Husk, and Niffty spend more time together, Pentious catches feels for Cherri, and the Vees get their popcorn ready. Pentious tries to tell Cherri he's interested for like the whole episode and ends up just saying "please don't die ok bye"
Battle. Alastor put up a force field around the hotel. It stops working. Angel and Husk make sex jokes while committing several counts of murder, Niffty stabs anything she can see, Alastor and Adam fight but Alastor turns into a puddle and leaves, Pentious kisses Cherri and then fucking dies, and Charlie and Vaggie are fighting side by side. Lucifer shows up and tells Adam "you get no bitches because I stole them both", and then Niffty stabs Adam to death. Everyone sings and then HOLY SHIT PENTIOUS MADE IT TO HEAVEN
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apocalypticavolition · 5 months
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Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 14: Wolfbrother
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If Robert Jordan can reuse chapter titles, I can reuse post images even if they make absolutely no sense in this current context! Anyway. Yadda yadda yadda, spoilers for the entirety of the series, blah blah blah, do not continue if you don't want that, something something something, by clicking Keep Reading you agree to agree with everything I say, hmm hmm hmm, all very standard and completely enforceable not that anyone could possibly object to those terms, let's get started!
So since I'm not in the groove, last time I forgot to do the chapter icon. This time I won't do that: the icon is wolf. This is probably not a surprise considering the chapter title. It certainly won't surprise anyone to learn that this is a Perrin chapter about Perrin doing Wolfbrother things. Last chapter involves even less surprises! It had an all-new icon, the Portal Stone. I refuse to believe any of you need me to elaborate on what it stands for or why it was used last time. Thank you!
“Gone?” Ingtar demanded of the air. “And my guards saw nothing. Nothing! They cannot just be gone!”
Rand's channeler madness is infectious, what with Ingtar trying to have a conversation with the sky. Then again, I'd wonder if I was going mad under these conditions myself: three dudes all gone, two of them incredibly conspicuous, horses missing with them, not a single track.
Mat shrugged. “I don’t know. Rand was. . . .” Perrin wanted to throw something at him, hit him, anything to stop him, but Ingtar and Uno were watching.
Perrin doesn't often get to be a bro to Rand (and frankly even fewer chances to be one to Mat), so it's always very sweet to see that he actually is very much best friends with the guy, even if Rand's acting stupid.
“Why would Hurin leave like that, in the middle of the night, without a word? He knows what we’re about. How am I to track this Shadow-spawned filth without him? I would give a thousand gold crowns for a pack of trail hounds. If I did not know better, I would say the Darkfriends managed this so they can slip east or west without me knowing. Peace, I don’t know if I do know better.”
Ingtar is pretty sure he knows the capabilities of the Darkfriends they're chasing since he let them in, but after this it's not unreasonable to doubt. And frankly, with Fain being Fain, he does not know better at all.
Serves me right for what I told Rand. I wish I could run.
Another reason nobody talks to anybody else in this story is that every time they do, everyone takes each other's advice in the worst way possible. Rand has literally run away from the timeline, which is one step less reasonable than trying to launch himself into orbit. I wouldn't talk to him after that either, I'd be worried my suggestion he should eat something be followed up by finding him with half his horse in his stomach and the other half not having had time to die yet.
His thoughts drifted, feeling for what must be out there, what was always out there in country where men were few or far between, feeling for his brothers. He did not like to think of them that way, but they were.
Really another big problem Jordan had in his Perrin plotting is that he stopped forcing the kid to escalate his power use the way that Rand and the Wondergirls had to. Like, this book he willingly talks to the books, next book he'll willingly run through T'A'R, and by the end of book six he's commanding an army of wolves... and then he just stagnates. He does get to run away from being a werewolf for the rest of Jordan's books, so Sanderson has to do an absolute rush job to make Perrin able to play at everyone else's power level.
It was a faint picture of a man dressed in clothes made of hides, with a long knife in his hand, but overlaid on the image, more central, was a shaggy wolf with one tooth longer than the rest, a steel tooth gleaming in the sunlight as the wolf led the pack in a desperate charge through deep snow toward the deer that would mean life instead of slow death by starvation, and the deer thrashing to run in powder to their bellies, and the sun glinting on the white until it hurt the eyes, and the wind howling down the passes, swirling the fine snow like mist, and. . . .
Weirdly, the first time I tried to copy this segment my computer decided that I clearly instead wanted to copy-paste a screengrab of a Discord conversation that hadn't been in the clipboard for some time.
We should not let my computer's clinical insanity distract us from appreciating how awesome Elyas's wolf name is (though "long in the tooth" meaning what it does, it feels a bit inadvertently mean).
It was not the image he had made, a young man with heavy shoulders and shaggy, brown curls, a young man with an axe at his belt, who others thought moved and thought slowly. That man was there, somewhere in the mind picture that came from the wolves, but stronger by far was a massive, wild bull with curved horns of shining metal, running through the night with the speed and exuberance of youth, curly-haired coat gleaming in the moonlight, flinging himself in among Whitecloaks on their horses, with the air crisp and cold and dark, and blood so red on the horns, and. . . . Young Bull.
Perrin's wolf name is better though, which is 50% why he hates it. The other half is the way it immortalizes his trauma, but boo hoo Perrin learn to love killing Whitecloaks now, you'll be better off in two books if you do.
The one time he had gone to the dungeon, with Egwene, the smell of Fain had made his hair stand on end; not even Trollocs smelled so foul. He had wanted to rip through the bars of the cell and tear the man apart, and finding that inside himself had frightened him more than Fain did. To mask Fain’s smell in his own mind, he added the scent of Trollocs before he howled aloud.
It is a damn shame you didn't kill him while you had the chance, Perrin.
Howled aloud. Those poor Borderlanders, horses, and also Mat I guess. They're worried about three dudes disappearing without a trace, some of them are probably convinced channeling was involved, and now one of the foreign hangers-on is howling.
Their fury infected him. His lips peeled back in a snarl, and he took a step, to join them, run with them in the hunt, in the killing. With an effort he broke the contact except for a thin sense that the wolves were there. He could have pointed to them across the intervening distance. He felt cold inside. I’m a man, not a wolf. Light help me, I am a man!
Dude is going crazier than the male channeler in the party is. Kind of a shame he didn't have a real madness arc like Rand's; maybe Jordan kinda planned on it but ditched it for various reasons including redundancy?
“I have heard of things like this,” Ingtar said slowly, after a moment. “Rumors. There was a Warder, a man called Elyas Machera, who some said could talk to wolves. He disappeared years ago.”
That's hella convenient. You'd think they'd try to hush up Machera's disappearance as much as possible. Who told?
A few of them looked skeptical—Masema went so far as to spit—but Uno nodded thoughtfully, and that was enough for most. Mat was the hardest to convince. “A sniffer! You? You’re going to track murderers by smell? Perrin, you are as crazy as Rand. I am the only sane one left from Emond’s Field, with Egwene and Nynaeve trotting off to Tar Valon to become—”
I mean, Masema and Mat aren't technically wrong in that Perrin's feeding everyone some bullshit, but really I would like Mat to look at the man whose side he's sharing and pick literally any other side. Also don't be mean about the gals.
Vultures flapping, their white wings stained red; bloody, featherless heads tearing and gorging. He broke loose before his stomach emptied itself.
I always picture vultures as desert birds thanks to cartoons and stuff but I just looked it up and apparently they like used to be in France and whatnot. Never woulda guessed. Sadly their modern range in the Old World is a little diminished, but I guess they did pretty well for themselves between the nuclear apocalypse and the magical apocalypse. Good for them!
Mat turned his horse eagerly. “Maybe it’s Rand. I knew he wouldn’t run out on me.”
Cauthor shippers resurrected after their brutal demises last chapter. Also it's great that Mat knows that even after their pissy fights with each other they're still friends.
“Moiraine Sedai sent me, Lord Ingtar,” Verin announced with a satisfied smile. “She thought you might need me...”
Well obviously this statement is 100% true and certainly not a bald-faced lie. Even if we wanted to pretend that for some reason Moiraine didn't immediately induct Verin into her inner circle off-screen, Verin has every reason to think that Moiraine sent her. Remember this little bit from Chapter 7?
“Then we must find the dagger, Sister. Agelmar is sending men to hunt those who took the Horn and slew his oathmen, the same who took the dagger. If one is found, the other will be.”
We must find the dagger. By "we", it's obvious Moiraine meant the three women in the room at that moment and not the good guys as a general concept like most people would mean in casual conversation. Further, "must" was definitely being used in the sense of "this is an order that you must obey" and not just "it is imperative that this be done". Literally any other interpretation of this sentence is crazy talk, because Verin is obviously bound by the Three Oaths as a good guy and it's how she interpreted it, and definitely not to further her own ends by twisting someone else's words to the breaking point. Once she saw that neither Moiraine nor Siuan were in any hurry to recover the dagger and the horn, she was morally obligated to do so as the only other party of the "we" Moiraine so obviously meant.
Obviously. She is not suspicious at all, @checkoutmybookshelf.
“The Ogier, Lord Ingtar? And your sniffer went with him? What would those two have in common with . . . ?” Ingtar gaped at her, and she snorted. “Did you think you could keep something like that secret?” She snorted again. “Sniffers. Vanished, you say?”
“A new sniffer, just when you lose your old one. How . . . providential. You found no tracks? No, of course not. You said no trace. Odd. Last night.”
Verin is absolutely the best kind of Aes Sedai just for stuff like this, by the way. "Yes I know all about your dumb secrets and no obviously I'm not going to try and arrest the man, I'm not even going to try to arrest the Dragon Re-- I mean, tell me about Perrin. That's a crazy coincidence, isn't it?" Verin's not allowed to spend too much time onscreen because if she could she'd have had everything solved in three books.
They started off in a jingle of harness and armor, Verin riding close beside Ingtar and questioning him closely, but too low to be overheard. She gave Perrin a look when he tried to maintain his place, and he fell back. “It’s Rand she’s after,” Mat murmured, “not the Horn.”
Seriously, the only mistake she's made so far is letting Mat and Perrin get suspicious of her, but even then she's got them obeying her so she's doing just fine. They're not even the wrong kind of suspicious.
Perrin nodded. Wherever you’ve gotten to, Rand, stay there. It’s safer than here.
"Dramatic irony exploits the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Connop Thirlwall in his 1833 article On the Irony of Sophocles originally highlighted the role of irony in drama.[25][26] The Oxford English Dictionary defines dramatic irony as:[12]
the incongruity created when the (tragic) significance of a character's speech or actions is revealed to the audience but unknown to the character concerned; the literary device so used, orig. in Greek tragedy."
I left the now-useless footnotes in so it would be very obvious who I was quoting, thus exempting me from having to source them properly. Alas, this has attracted the attention of the University of Chicago Press Enforcement Bureau, so I must bid you all adieu until the heat blows over.
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beauty-and-passion · 5 months
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Fanders Sides Season 3: The Asides
Hello dears,
after the introductory post about FSS3 and before starting with the actual episodes, I wanted to write a short post about the Asides too.
As you all know, recently Mr. Sanders moved a few episodes here and there: random stuff became part of the Asides, while ATHD, FWSA and WTIT became main series episodes. Why did it take him so long to realize they were following the plot more than other videos? No idea.
But even though Mr. Sanders seems to find it a bit difficult to distinguish between main series episodes and Asides, the fandom on the other hand seems to know pretty well what the difference is and your suggestions in the survey have been AMAZING.
This is why I wanted to write this post: to expand on some of your best ideas. But also to offer you this post as a starting point. If you have even more ideas/thoughts/concepts for other possible Asides episodes, feel free to add them with a message or a reblog. We can go on forever with great suggestions.
Once again, I applied the same three rules I talked about in the introductory post:
to write something in the real of human/editing possibilities
it should be an idea that can be developed in a 20-minute-long video
no ships
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The promised rap battle
During Am I ORIGINAL?, Logan had the best rap battle of all time and in the end, he said Patton would be the next one he would “fight”.
So this Aside will be the match Logan wanted. He will crush Patton with great verses, amazing flow and sick burns.
Patton, on the other hand, won’t take any offense at all and reply with puns. Just. So. Many. Puns.
Will Logan still win? Will the puns be enough to defeat him? Will he start using the power of puns too? Will this battle turn into a huge battle of puns? Will Patton have fun regardless of the result?
You decide on the answers to all of these questions, except for the last one. Because we all know Patton would enjoy some quality time with Logan.
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The very normal vlog
This episode is a very normal vlog in which Thomas talks about very normal stuff happening in his life and the Core Sides comments/offers suggestions as always.
So Logan says Thomas should've remembered that doing X thing wasn't great. Thomas replies that it was an infinitesimal mistake.
Patton compliments Thomas with a pun. Thomas replies with another pun.
Roman tells Thomas they should strive for greater things. Thomas says that they should start by improving their acting skills.
Virgil reminds Thomas that trying new things can be challenging and he can fail. Thomas says that it won't be as bad as Virgil's make-up.
Virgil is caught off guard by this, but before he can comment, Thomas ends the episode and sends them all away. Only after the Sides disappeared, he said goodbye to his viewers and turned off the camera, only then he reveal himself as Janus.
Janus stretches, snaps his fingers and says he's still the best liar of all time, before leaving.
The episode ends with Thomas, who is still sleeping in his bed. He suddenly jolts up: "Oh my gosh", he yells, "I need to do a video!”
Bam, start intro.
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The troll
An April fools episode titled “Am I the ASSHOLE???” and the whole video is over dramatic and makes fun of tropes, also is poorly shot.
This is the original post of @dillydallydove from which this person took the idea. And it's hilarious, I love it.
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The most serious argument ever
A prequel episode set when Virgil was still one of the Dark Sides and centered on an argument they have.
You can choose whatever topic you want, but it should be the stupidest argument ever. And the dark boys should all act as if it’s the most important topic in the world, nothing is more important than this topic and nothing is more important than proving the others are ALL wrong.
Follows shenanigans, Janus pretending to mediate only to say something and add more fuel to the chaos, Virgil trying to prove his point with extra convoluted thoughts, Remus throwing stuff around only to add more chaos, Orange sending death threats.
Bonus points if they manage to set something on fire without matches.
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Grocery shopping
Thomas going grocery shopping with his Sides.
Logan is in charge: he wants to put just healthy food in the cart.
Patton begs Logan for at least one single pack of cookies ("Thomas needs them, as a treat!").
Roman checks for the most aesthetically pleasing packages and the ones with the most promises, no matter how far-fetched they are ("Logan, this shampoo will make Thomas' hair fluent and shiny! And this cereal mix will make him taller! We must buy them!").
Virgil disappears for entire minutes, then comes back with a full emergency kit, a new alarm system, pepper spray and a blanket. When Logan asks him why, he replies that the safety stuff it's necessary, while the blanket is for him because it will help him stay calm, once Thomas starts handling this stuff.
Remus runs all over the grocery store, then comes back with different stuff: the first time with the biggest zucchini and carrots he can find, then with sticks and poles. Then, with all the different brands of condoms he can find. Then with lubricants. He says Thomas needs them and drops everything in the cart.
Janus pretends to help Logan, but also sneaks stuff behind other stuff: shorter boxes behind taller ones, chocolate chips under a bag of vegetables and so on. When Logan finds out, Janus picks a bottle of wine and puts it on the conveyor belt. Logan sighs and lets everything go.
Thomas, who went to the grocery store to buy one bag of apples, comes back home with a bag of carrots, a bag of zucchini, 2 boxes of cookies, 3 new shampoos, a pack of condoms, a new emergency kit, two cereal boxes, a blanket and a bottle of wine. And no apples.
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The game night
The episode has the structure of a game show, in which every Side has to answer questions about the other Sides, in order to win an amazing prize.
Logan tries to use his intuition, but it doesn't always work.
Patton replies with kind, good, nice answers and everyone feels bad about telling him he's wrong, so he somehow wins.
Roman has no idea, so he drops the first thing that pops into his mind and fails miserably.
Virgil mumbles something, then says he doesn't know/it's stupid/he doesn't want to reply. Somehow, ends up second after Patton.
Janus straight out lies about everything and somehow he's right. But everyone refuses to acknowledge he's right.
Remus throws the most sexual ideas and argues about who has the longest dick. Somehow, he ends up being just one step above Roman. No one understands how, Roman first.
In the end, the amazing price was the last piece of pizza.
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The "Sides' daily schedule" series
This can be a series of seven videos, in which every Side takes his time to tell us what they do during a normal day of their life.
Logan shows a perfectly organized schedule, down to the second. His routine includes cleaning, organizing, planning, working, writing, reading and a relaxing hobby: chemical reactions.
Remus sneaks in to be his lab assistant. The video ends up with them blowing up something.
Patton's schedule is more relaxed, made of sunshine, happiness, hours spent remembering the past, sad hours, more sad hours - but then Patton gets better, he gets out of his room and meets his friends. And plans a nice time for all of them.
The evening ends with Logan emptying a whole fire extinguisher on the barbecue, because somehow Patton set it on fire.
Roman starts his day by being his most marvelous self, removes his night-time beauty mask, makes his daycare routine, strikes poses, talks about how great he is, goes around slaying monsters and dueling... all in the morning. Then, he sits and the desk and works non-stop for 20 hours straight. Then, he gets up still with his marvelous self, says he has not been “very productive” and goes on a trip to slay more monsters and flirt with beautiful men in distress.
In the end, Remus has to stop him from working even more, by hitting him on the head. He throws Roman on his bed, throws the sheets on him but, before leaving, he never forgets to carefully put on Roman his night-time beauty mask.
Remus' video alternates between him starting to say something, to huge censored parts. Around half of the video, he loudly protests, because he's censored, even when he doesn't say anything sexual. His day includes pissing out Roman, messing with Logan's chemical stuff, obediently sitting and listening to Janus reading him a book, throwing stuff in a volcano, jumping in a river with piranha and 20 different sexual positions all censored.
Virgil's video shows him doing something peacefully, only to suddenly stop, look directly at the viewers and ask them questions. Like: he's peacefully knitting, then he stops, lifts his head and asks: did you turn the stove off? Is it still off? Or is it on? Is your house burning down? Will it burn down before you go to bed? Will you die in your bed?
The questions stop, to show us more of Virgil’s day and his different ways to relax. Some are heavy blankets and knitting, others are push-ups, running like a madman for hours, sleeping like a log, watching horror movies and doing make-up while listening to emo/rock music.
Janus' schedule is weird. The scene before he's walking, then it abruptly cuts to him knitting, then to him halfway into an explanation of a specific part of a book, to him explaining what he will eat. It looks like a series of scenes randomly put together.
Only in the end, we will find out he did it on purpose, because he has no intention of telling what he actually does. So he tells the viewers to have fun with what they have (which is basically nothing), while putting on a beauty mask, a glass of wine in his hand and relaxes into a bathtub.
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The "Dressing like each other" series
This can easily end up in another series of videos, in which every Side raids the closet of one Side and they all dress up like him.
Logan's closet should include tons of shirts and lab coats, so they would all dress up like teachers or lab technicians. Roman hates it, Remus loves to dress as a mad scientist.
Patton's closet should include bright colors, funny hats, animal prints everywhere. Either they would dress up as animal lovers or as stereotypical fathers from the 50s. Janus searches everywhere for something that's not bright-colored. In the end, he fights Virgil for the only two gray clothes.
Roman's closet should include rich, embroidered dresses with beautiful details on every piece of fabric. They would end up dressed as members of the court or royalty, with matching, fabulous makeup. Virgil complains and calls it "extra and preppy", only to end up being fabulous.
Virgil's closet should include black, emo, laced dresses for everyone. Also, guyliner and leather/laced matching accessories. Roman complains and calls it "dark and gloomy", only to end up being fabulous.
Janus' closet should include black and yellow dresses, fancy hats, polished shoes and fancy accessories like golden pocket watches, handkerchiefs with embroidered initials and so on. Logan appreciates the formality, Roman the nice details. Virgil calls it "even more extra" and ends up being quite fabulous. (Janus refuses to acknowledge it)
Remus' closet should include the most insane, batshit stuff, possibly put together in the weirdest way. They could end up dressed entirely in fishnet clothes, rainbow clothes, silly costumes or the most baroque, heavy costume ever known to mankind. Also, a shit ton of accessories, wigs, makeup and everything you can think of. Somehow, Janus is the only one who manages to find a coordinated set.
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And now, it's up to you!
Do you have more ideas for the Asides? Share them! The weirdest, the strangest, the better! :D
( Support me on Ko-fi )
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sorushing · 5 months
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Okay Okay Sorusing you've got me intrigued: What is FLY?!!!!
thanks for asking @sanfangirl !!! It’s my favorite things ever: superheroes, secret identities, and Hiccstrid. and modern AU, of course.
(So, FLY was the title I picked after seeing one of those motivational posts of it being an acronym for “first love yourself”. In the original iteration of this AU, it used to be more important, but the actually flying is also important lol. It’s not really that good of a title anymore but eh.)
This is my superhero AU (“really, not much to know” is actually the AU of this AU) in which Astrid is training to be a superhero sidekick at school. Her family name is disgraced, so she cannot become a “solo” hero without lots of extra work in college. She has extremely good control over her water powers.
in this universe, everyone born in “The Above” (artificial flying islands above th earhipelago after a war) is born with something called a “karyon”: a mark/bead on the neck that grants them powers by using a particle called dust.
I have an entire 10 minute explanation on dust that is plot-relevant but I’m skipping it right now for brevity’s sake
one day, she is confronted with an odd situation: a vigilante who’s powers don’t work how powers SHOULD work, fighting a new kind of villain that recently popped up. He doesn’t have a karyon, and neither do these new villains who seem to permanently be beserk and incapable of human speech or thought.
after this odd meeting, she wakes up in the middle of the night, outside her house, after having an odd dream, and her powers are…off. Instead of water manipulation, she can now fire off odd spikes…and why can she smell so well?!
She eventually discovers more about the situation: these new villains are people controlled by a villain that the vigilante - whom she’s dubbed “black” - calls “The Queen”, and are being hypnotised to do her bidding.
she eventually agrees to help him out, and joins him in his fight against her, since the heroes aren’t doing anything about the situation and she knows they won’t budge any time soon.
The vigilante calls himself “Night Fury” which as her laughing at first: him? Name himself after the unholy offspring of lightning and death that all of the Seven Families boasted to have survived encounters with?
But then she realised that his powers fit the creature to a T: the lightning. The super speed. She invisibility.
and then, more puzzle pieces click. She’s somehow gotten the powers of a Nadder. All of these new villains are dragon themed…so the Queen must have some obsession with the ancestral dragons.
things spiral from there.
on hiccup’s side of things, life isn’t looking great at all: the only person in the above who doesn’t have a karyon.
he has three and they all don’t work properly at all. They even cause him so much harm that he had to undergo surgery to get one removed.
His father is the shining beacon of his family, the leader of the Seven, superheroes of epic proportions who are gods among men, essentially.
his mother is Skullcrusher’s second in command who has control over the Alpha Matrix, a device that monitors all superpower usage. (And a certain kind of superhuman but shhh he doesn’t know that)
and then, there’s him, Hiccup. he’s just a screw-up. He is not worth of either family name and knows the other relatives in the council are dying to kick him out and leave him nameless. To make him a nobody.
So it doesn’t surprise him in the slightest when his father sends him to live with his aunt to avoid the media.
hiccup knows it’s to hide the fact that his son is weak, or that he even HAS a son, but alas.
-
when hiccup was young, a supervillain did something to his karyons. Hiccup knows better than to ask which villain.
For whenever he asks; his father or mother just shake their head or freeze, clearly not wanting to talk about it.
he knows his karyon was messed up by a villain, and someday? Someday he WILL find out which villain and give him a piece of his mind. —
things don’t exactly begin to look up once the dreams start.
dreams in which is body doesn’t ache whenever he gets into contract with high concentrations of dust.
Dreams in which he can freely leap across rooftops, dreams in which he is fighting villains effortlessly from afar with his lightning powers - well not completely effortlessly, but still!! - and shows great mastery over his lightning and super speed-
powers which he doesn’t have. At all.
or…does he?
things derail further once a certain blonde girl in blue begins to pop up in his dreams, stubborn, fierce, and…wait isn’t that his classmate?!
-
also another fun fact: Gothi is a tattooist in this AU.
eventually, the other dragon riders would show up…but I’m not that far yet.
———
this is my oldest au and the one that has been reworked the most.
anyways I think I should stop here before I type an entire essay. Thanks for asking :D
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cloud-somersault · 5 days
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Just wanted to comment that I found your post about the five pillars of magic and who is proficient in which so incredibly interesting! I was actually kinda surprised that Little Star had no experience in Shadow because I’ve gotten the impression that Macaque had more of the role of teacher with them than Wukong did at that time, and he had MK delve into it a little, but I guess the circumstances were VERY different with Macaque actually training Star but manipulating MK to siphon his powers when they first met (actually intrigued about your take on that in the Constellations verse) but obviously you as the author have more info on the characters than we as the audience do.
Poor MK is the only one not proficient in an area yet 😭 but tbh considering he’s so young compared to the rest of them and has been training officially for even less (I guess approximately a year? Maybe more or less? Idk the timelines help) then I think he’s doing real good! My guess would be that he’s gonna master either Celestial or possibly Elemental first since I guess that’s some of what Wukong had been teaching him so far and we know MK takes after him a lot in certain areas? Plot twist would be if you have some mega angst planned and he ends up mastering Death first (I remember Wukong mentioning that the golden flowers of his birth might have appeared in the Underworld too?), orrrr maybe he’ll end up being a Jack of All Trades, Master of None? Anyway MK baby I believe in you 🧡
Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked that post, I should reblog it more so others can see 😭Macaque did have a strong role in training Little Star, but the prerequisites for training in shadow are difficult...and not exactly something that sounds fun. To Little Star, magic is fun first and foremost. I don't think they'd be interested (or patient enough) to train in shadow magic. Macaque would respect that.
Huh. 🤔If I had to explain in a constellations!way or how I see it happening, Macaque was manipulating the shadows in MK's heart and mind, pulling on that emotion of wanting to be a great student, powerful and cool enough so that Monkey King would be impressed by him. We know, at this point, that MK was wondering if Wukong thought he'd made a mistake in choosing MK as his successor. Macaque would've honed in on that feeling of inadequacy and used it to his advantage.
So, then, Macaque could give power to MK in that way. Once Macaque can control/see the shadows in someone's heart and mind, it's exceptionally easy for him to manipulate them. Macaque can give them nightmares, conversely, he can also prevent nightmares by this same manipulation (this will come up later). I'd like to think that he needs to have some feeling to go off of, y'know. A way to get his foot in the door. Training with MK in season 1 was Macaque finding that way in, and he grabbed hold of it, and...the reset of the episode happened. That's how I'd explain it, anyway. So MK doesn't know shadow magic formally. He's just felt it and somewhat controlled it...kind of.
No, MK is not proficient...yet. In Constellations, the first three seasons of the show took place in two years. Right now, in the epilogue, we are in...May! Of the third year (yes i have this fic planned down to the timeline, leave me alone). The epilogue will end in, roughly, September. MK will be training that whole time.
So he's been training for about two and a half years. I'd say he's making great progress! He's mastered the 72 transformations, and once he's directed his celestial magic to interact with all of the elements, he'll have crossed another milestone. For magic proficiency, we have to think...smaller. Like by individual spells. For an immortal, time is nothing. For MK? Every second counts, and he's learning fast. He's great at cloud-somersaulting already after his first attempt. That's fucking astounding since it even took Wukong some time to master. You're right that he's doing great!!
MK is focusing on celestial and elemental right now, yes. This will come up in chapter 6 of the epilogue. And! In chapter 3, Macaque and Wukong discussed the order of teaching MK the elements. In their minds, that means MK has a solid foundation in celestial magic, enough so that they can push him to do more elemental things.
Interesting that you'd mention death magic...what a plot twist that would be, indeed. 😁We'll have to see what happens. But! I do love the idea of MK being a jack of all trades. I just love characters like that. But, if I were to put a celestial primate in that category right now, it'd be Macaque. But that's just because he loves magic so much.
Wukong did say that MK's birth made golden flowers bloom in every realm (this is very important) along with an earthquake. So! Golden flowers from MK's birth are in the Underworld! Wonder what happened with them, huh.
Maybe we'll find out~ 😉
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sacredpyre · 1 year
Text
❥         Netflix Wednesday’s 
“ I find social media to be a soul sucking void of meaningless affirmation.”
“ You’re a brilliant girl, but sometimes you get in your own way.“
“”Never meet your heroes.”“
“Except I won’t cry and whine like a child.”
“I’ve learned so much from you. Part of it is admittedly criminal behavior.“
“ Are you mansplaining my power? “
“Too odd for the normies, not odd enough for the outcasts.“
“The most interesting plants grow in the shade.“
“ Look at you my little deathtrap. “
“I like to win. Is that so wrong?“
““The only person who gets to torture my brother is me.” 
“ Emotion isn’t exactly your strong suit “
“Emotion equals weakness.“
“These are all traits of great writers. And serial killers.”
“Being your friend should come with a warning label.”
“I don’t believe in heaven or hell, but I do believe in revenge.“
“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.“
“Because trust and cooperation have always been the hallmarks of our relationship.“
“There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being proven right. “
“I can’t believe I’m actually going to miss your creepy, lifeless eyes waking me up every morning.”
“Anytime I grow nauseous at the sight of a rainbow or hear a pop song that makes my ears bleed, I’ll think of you. “
“ Not hugging is kind of our thing “
“if you hear me screaming bloody murder theres a good chance i'm just enjoying myself.”
“Smells like childhood.“
“Typically I have great admiration for well-executed revenge plots, but yours was a bit extreme, even for my high standards. “
“Please. Flattery will get you nowhere.“
“ Terrible. Everyone would know I failed to get the job done. ”
“This is far too unique to wear to something like class. I suggest we wait for a more special occasion, like a funeral.”
“I’m not interested in participating in tribal adolescent clichés.”
“…I see the world as a place that must be endured, and my personal philosophy is kill or be killed.”
“I act as if I don’t care if people dislike me. Deep down… I secretly enjoy it.”
“For the record I don’t believe that I’m better than everyone else. Just that I’m better than you.” 
“Use the words ‘little’ and ‘girl’ to address me again and I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“If he breaks your heart, I’ll nail gun his.”
“What kind of dystopian hellscape is this?”
“Every day is all about me. This one just comes with cake and a bad song.“
“It’s not my fault I can’t interpret your emotional Morse code.” 
“Genuine and sweet? How could you do this to me?!”
““My appetite eludes me. The same way the truth eludes you.”
“I don’t bury hatchets. I sharpen them.“
“I haven’t always been against birthdays. Each one reminds me I’m a year closer to death’s cold embrace.”
“I enjoy funerals. I’ve been crashing them since I was old enough to read the obituary section. “
““If you are discovered, I will disown you and collect the reward tied to your capture.”
“Because for some reason I cannot fathom or indulge, you seem to like me.” 
“I will ignore you, stomp on your heart, and always put my needs and interests first.”
“Of course the first person I kiss would turn out to be a psychotic, serial-killing monster. I guess I have a type.”
“Just some light torture. Don’t worry, I won’t leave a mark.”
“You can’t wake the dead. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
““Will today’s stalker become tomorrow’s nemesis?”
“ I’m not friend material, let alone more-than-friend material. “
“People like me and you, we’re different.”
“The truth is, there are monsters everywhere. And sometimes the monsters we least suspect are the most dangerous.”
“one coincidence is just a coincidence, two are a clue, and three are proof.”
“It’s either they write our story or we do. You can’t have it both ways.”
“Ask again, and you’ll be down to eight lives.“
“Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” He was my first crush.”
“Emotions are a gateway trait. They lead to feelings, which trigger tears. I don’t do tears.“
“Tears don’t fix anything. So I vowed to never do it again.“
“ Do you make a habit of scaring the hell out of people? “
“You guys are making me nauseous. Not in a good way.“
“I’ve always hated the expression, “write what you know.” It’s a hall pass for the imagination-impaired.“
"Believe Nothing You Hear and Half of What You See."
“Whoever Invented High Heels Clearly Had a Side Hustle as a Torturer."
"You Are the Reason I Understand How Imperative It Is That I Never Lose Sight of Myself."
“Honestly, I wish I cared a little more.”
“Somewhere no one can hear your screams.”
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