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eldritch-spouse · 8 months

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The Clergy’s Eye employees/monsters ranked on how much I’d trust them to watch my cat Emma! I apologize if I misspell names or if I forget someone

For context: I wouldn’t be the Admin, and personality wise Emma is sorta like a dog. She actually likes playing in water, and she follows me around a lot. She is a hunter though

TLDR to start off

NO: Vinnel, Magus+Glauk, Krulu, Sybastian, Hellion

Its not that I don’t trust them, it’s that I don’t trust her: Morrel, Patches, The Bobbles (excluding Agner), The Cleric, Colmei, Gallon

Sure, why not?: Agner, Santi, Pebbles, Nebul

The best options: Fank-E, Grimbly, Belo

Now for specific reasonings!

Vinnel: Whether or not Vinnel is good at it, doesn’t matter (though I doubt he’d be great) I’m sorry Pinnie, I just hate Vinnel and want to spend as little time around him as possible

Magus and Glauk: Do I even need to explain? I mean she likes water but come on. I’d be better off leaving her to fend for herself

Krulu: He’d likely thing the task “beneath him” Unlike the previous ranking, though, I would consider him if he was the only option.

Sybastian: Sorta between “NO” and “Not that I don’t trust them, I don’t trust her” in that I don’t think he’d be all that good at caring for her needs, but also she might try and hunt the mimiclings which NOBODY wants to see the aftermath of.

Hellion: Yeah no I just don’t trust him

Morrel: I think he’d have enough self control to not do anything bad to her, but Emma? Listen she’s not a very bitey cat but you can never be too sure. And she is MUCH more likely to break skin than a human. Even if she doesn’t bite him and get poisoned, she’d still mess with the bobbles and knock over stuff in the kitchen and steal food. I care about Emma too much and I respect Morrel too much to put her in his care.

Patches: She’d just get in the way. Best case scenario she’d be sleeping in a spare pumpkin but let’s be honest she’s probably tormenting the bobbles.

Speaking of Bobbles..: No. She’d try and kill them.

The Cleric: They have bigger things to focus on. Plus she’d probably get tangled in the strings soo..

Colmei: If it weren’t for the bees, he’d go in the “Sure, why not?” category. But Emma HAS stuck her paw down a hornet nest before. Don’t trust her.

Gallon: She’d be a menace. Knocking over bottles, getting cat hair everywhere, stealing sips from drinks, getting caught in the goop a couple times. Not a fun experience and I respect Gallon too much for that.

Agner: Nothing notable to say! I think he’d do a decent job.

Santi: As long as he’d not feeding (don’t want to traumatize her or have him and whoever he’s fucking get stared at by a cat) I think he could do a good job!

Pebbles: Nothing notable to say, once again. I think it’d be cute though.

Nebul: Long as he can keep her chill and away from the products, I think it’d turn out well. Maybe he’d had to tell Purpur to be careful with her though. Give the “pets for sale” a little serotonin to brighten their day.

Fank-E: Omg I would get SO MANY cute silly pictures by the end of it!!! Probably make like ten more viral memes with her, get her internet famous. I would have to make sure he doesn’t dye her pink or something though.

Grimbly: I think he would LOVE her, as long as he’s on break. Pretty bows and glitter galore. Just uh, try not to get TOO much glitter on her, don’t want her to get sick. Maybe make it edible glitter for when she grooms her fur.

Belo: The best of the best and my first choice! I mean, cuddling with an angel already has to be an amazing experience, but a FLUFFY ANGEL? I think he would be determined to take good care of her too! Plus, they say cats can sense vibes, and I mean, considering everyone else Belo probably would have half decent vibes.

So that’s my ranking! Signing off

- Spooky Anon 🕸️

To be fair, I agree with most of these too.

Except Pebble and Fank-e, for similar reasons.

Pebble is too nervous. Animals sense that nervous energy and they generally don't like it. I think your cat may react aggressively or negatively in general based on that. And, at the first hint of aggression, Pebble is putting distance between himself and the feline. He might even lose her.

Fank-e is an animal repellent. He's very LOUD, makes odd sounds, probably smells like all sorts of artificial products that are awful to a cat's nose, and he's hyper. He'd love to spend time with your cat, but to her, he's probably the equivalent of a blaring alarm on two legs.

#Gallon oc #Morell oc #Fank-e oc #Pebble oc #Hellion oc #Glauk oc #Magus oc #Krulu oc #Grimbly oc #Santi oc #Nebul oc #Belo oc #Agner oc #Beekeeper boie #Patches oc #Sybastian oc #Vinnel oc #Cleric oc

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lovebecomeshim · 3 years

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hello! your zutara posting today has finally motivated me to ask this question because I came to atla very late(last year, to be specific) and I Love It Very Much but am 1000% out of the loop as far as why what remains of fandom (at least that I've seen among my friends) is so very strongly zutara. I'm not opposed to it per se I just don't really know what has driven it to apparently be such a popular ship? can you help me understand and maybe convert me a little bit?

Hey!! Your ICON! :D I can try but I’m not sure how coherent I’ll be; however I AM sure someone a lot more competent will be willing to add to this. Either way, I’m glad you asked because my plan was to drag down as many people as possible with me.

*smacks the hood of zutara* this baby can fit so much mutual love and support!

This got so long, I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to put it under a cut on mobile and it already got deleted once so I’m scared to mess with it lol. Moving on.

I’m gonna start this with a disclaimer that im on mobile so formatting is tricky and I’m also really new to atla in that I only completed my first watch through in like 2019??? So some of my info is all just based on what I’ve picked up from Discourse 👀 so anyway the sparknotes version: zutara was wildly popular from the beginning. To the point where the atla crew internally disagreed on which ship should be endgame. (Ex. Bryke [showrunners] asked the writers to rewrite The Southern Raiders to make Zuko seem less ideal for Katara than Aang [which failed, depending on who you ask]; the animation team purposefully created a visual parrallel between Oma and Shu in the Cave of Two Lovers and Zuko and Katara in the catacombs under Ba Sing Se in the Crossroads of Destiny; etc.)

The ship was popular enough that Bryke actually chose to display zk fanart at a con for the sole purpose of mocking the fans, but that’s neither here nor there. The entire episode Ember Island Players, while a love letter to/parody of the whole show, was an opportunity to address zutara’s viability as a canon pairing (while, again, mocking zutaras for romanticizing that catacombs scene). Point is! It’s always been popular but with it not being endgame, there’s got to be something that’s given it staying power.

And that’s honestly got to do with three things: their dynamic, thematic cohesion, and potential.

(You know what... you know what, it’s four things. The fourth is they’re so aesthetically pleasing together and individually. Like, they’re just good looking people [specifically when they’re grown but they’re also cute kids] and that absolutely doesn’t hurt) (but it’s not the Point, it’s just nice to point out sometimes)

The dynamic is hard to get into without also looking at the canon pairings, but I think I can do that without unnecessary bashing. It’s just that part of the magic of zutara is really highlighted by what they give to each other that their other relationships don’t.

First off, it’s classic enemies to (would be) lovers. The absolute truest form of it. It’s not too different from how CS started out: a rogue antagonist with a job to do—but no personal vendetta against the future love interest—who is deeply and emotionally invested in his personal storyline (revenge/redemption) with little regard for how it effects other people after his entire life and genuine good nature are marred by suffering, and a fierce warrior girl with a strong moral compass and her own personal investment in stopping him (protect her family and save the world doing it). Obviously frustration and animosity grew between them by the nature of them being on opposing sides, but that just lends itself to the sweetness of their later reconciliation.

The thing is that while they’re wildly different on the surface (he’s a hot-headed prince of a fascist regime who is trying to capture the Avatar to please his father; she’s a nurturing daughter of the chief who is trying to protect and train the Avatar in order to topple his father’s throne) they find out that they have so much more in common both in their experiences and their personalities.

(What follows is an excessive use of the word “both” and I’m sorry about that)(I can edit it. I can do that. That IS an option............)

They both have an innate sense of justice that they are determined to see done (zuko, at the war meeting, sticking up for the Earth Kingdom kid when the guards torment his family, choosing not to steal from the pregnant couple despite his circumstances, abiding by his word to leave the SWT should Aang come willingly, etc.; katara, literally.... at any point). They both have pretty one-track minds at accomplishing certain goals once they’ve put their mind to it, regardless of a lack of support in that endeavor (it goes without saying I guess, but zuko’s entire hunt; katara’s determination to get the earth benders to fight back, her determination to absolutely destroy Pakku until he agrees to teach her, etc.). They both lost their mothers at young ages. Their worlds are war-torn and traumatizing to them both, if in different ways, but that ultimately forces them to grow up too quickly to be wholly independent individuals. They both have issues with their fathers (for WILDLY different reasons, but). They both hold extreme prejudices that they need to learn to overcome (which ties into thematic cohesion)(bit like Lizzie and Darcy in that way but magnified by a million). They’re both extremely emotional and empathetic—which can and often does result in loud outbursts. Katara’s a bit better adjusted and can temper her anger for longer than S1 Zuko can, but they both feel that anger deeply and have no compunctions expressing it (Katara is, usually, more justified, particularly in S1. Again, S1 Zuko is severely maladjusted but at the point when they could’ve feasibly become a couple, he’s so much better off with the way he carries himself). They both struggle with feelings of inferiority in their bending abilities when confronted with prodigal benders like Aang and Azula, but have the work ethic required to double down and become two of the most powerful benders in the three remaining nations. This is a little more minor but it is a parrallel that appeals to some shippers that they both have these alter egos in the Painted Lady (notably fire nation coded) and the Blue Spirit (water tribe coded) that are pretty different from who they are day-to-day and are useful in accomplishing a purpose that they as themselves cannot.

(I’m.... I just realized that this could potentially get very long. Should I have made a slide show with bullet points??????)

Anyway, similar. I know there’s more but there’s literally so much to love about zutara that I’ll drive myself a little crazy trying to compile all the ways they’re similar. (Just gonna say that at this exact moment I went back to add more similarities.... so okay then)

Once they’ve reconciled, we see how all of these things only lend themselves to a deeper intimacy together than they share with literally anyone else. There’s a steady partnership that positions them as the mom/dad of the gaang, while also providing the support necessary to allow the other to not have to carry so much responsibility. A lot of zutaras will point out how zuko is actually depicted doing the more domestic chores that are normally relegated to Katara once he joins the gaang, since the others in the group are two 12-year-olds and sokka. The one that sticks out the most is how he makes tea for the group and then serves them, while Katara is able to just relax with her friends around the fire. Fanon expands upon this a lot to Zuko helping with the laundry or the cooking or whatever else needs doing since he, as a once-refugee, is used to doing his own domestic tasks. Before Zuko joined, Katara was the one mothering everyone, sewing for them, cooking for them, etc. She’s always tending to the needs of the group, and that includes emotionally. She does the emotional labor for the gaang 99% of the time, but when she’s the one falling apart, she’s usually doing it alone and without the comfort that she normally provides for others. Until Zuko. And that’s before they’re even friends.

Which is WHY people romanticize the catacombs of Ba Sing Se so much. Katara is verbally attacking Zuko out of her own righteous anger but also her own prejudice when Zuko, surprisingly, chooses to be vulnerable with her. He’s been on a journey that’s opened his eyes a bit, but he’s never actively chosen to expose the rawest parts of his past to anyone. But for some reason he chooses to do that with Katara of all people. While she’s yelling at him. He sees her humanity, and for once can look past his prejudice and empathize with her. And this time, when she breaks down, she gets to be comforted. Katara normally talks about her mother when she’s trying to explain to someone else that she sees and understands they’re pain, as a form of comfort to them. Here, Zuko uses the exact same tactic. He sees her and he understands. And for zuko? He’s not being shut down. He’s allowed to articulate his pain regarding his mother without being ignored and made to internalize it, and he’s allowed to process how he feels about his scar out loud without being told that he deserved it. And then he lets her touch his scar, something we’ve seen him actively avoid before. He’s completely open to her and she’s completely open to him and all it took was one five minute conversation. She was about to use the little bit of Spirit water that she had, that she was saving for something Important, to heal the scar that still daily causes him pain just because they had, somehow, connected.

Plus there’s the whole parallel to the star-crossed lovers forbidden from one another, a war divides their people—

And then zuko messes up, he regresses, he gets what he wants and he HATES it. And the sense of justice he had as a child has been restored to him against his will and he can’t think of anything he wants to do more than the Right Thing, so he joins team avatar. Before he does that though, we get to see his relationship with Mai, which is where comparison really comes in. And what we see is Zuko, fresh off of his encounter with Katara in the catacombs, trying to be emotionally honest with Mai... and getting shut down and dismissed. Which is just how Mai is and it’s fine, but not for Zuko. Still, he keeps trying, and he keeps getting ignored or scoffed at or yelled at. Which is really a larger symbol for how he doesn’t fit in his old life anymore, but again that’s about thematic cohesion. He tries to articulate his anxieties about returning home, he tries to make romantic gestures, he tries to explain how morally conflicted he’s feeling—and Mai diverts to some kind of physical affection to shut him up and a parting comment that is pretty much always, in essence, “I don’t wanna talk about this.” So they don’t. On the other hand, once zuko and Katara are friends, we see him again emotionally distraught and caught up in his anxieties about facing Iroh, and it’s Katara who comes to him and listens to him and comforts and encourages him.

Similarly, we have Aang clamming up and getting uncomfortable whenever Katara shows any negative emotion, usually resulting in him making excuses or running away. Or, in the case of the Southern Raiders, lecturing her on how she needs to just let go of her anger about her mother’s murder. People have talked this episode to death and usually better than I ever could, so imma... keep it brief. There’s a serious disconnect between Aang and Katara in his ability to empathize with Katara and her needs that has her tamping down her vulnerability and amping up her anger. He tells her that he was able to forgive his people’s genocide and appa’s kidnapping (petnapping? Theft??), which is blatantly not true but also not an entirely equal parrallel to Katara’s situation, and continues making these little remarks throughout the episode. But it’s Zuko that Katara opens up to. It’s with him that she’s able to talk about the most traumatic day of her life, and it’s with him that she’s able to get the closure she needs, cementing their bond as friends and partners. This disagreement between Aang and Katara is then... never resolved. They just never bring it up and hear what the other is saying.

There’s a fic called The Portraits of Ember Island that has a line that so completely sums up the heart of the matter for why people love their dynamic. For context, zuko has woken up early to help Katara with the cooking and they spend the whole time just letting one another talk, and zuko stops to ask why she always just lets him talk. And so she stops to ask why he’s always helping, and it goes as follows:

There’s just... so much mutual support! Trust! Intimacy!! And it just continues like that from the Southern Raiders on, listening to each other, advising each other, watching each other’s backs! And then! Literally saving each other’s lives!! I will never be over the last Agni kai. Not ever. Zuko may have been willing to jump in front of lightning for anyone, but he actually did it for Katara. And in a show, that’s the thing that really matters. It’s a fulfilled trope usually exclusively applied to romantic pairings, and it ended up applying to Zuko and Katara. And then she ran out into the middle of a fight with tunnel vision just to get to him.

Also!! Also Zuko pushing Katara out of the way of the falling rocks at the Western Air Temple!! And Katara catching him as he fell from the war balloon that he fought Azula on!! Before they’re even getting along, they’re the ones reaching for each other. They come to this place of equal ground, as partners, who watch each other’s backs, call each other out but still listen attentively and understand, and provide the support that the other has been sorely lacking up until they knew each other (whether that be from lack of effort or lack of understanding from others, or an unwillingness to accept it for themselves).

Then, trailing along under the surface of this, we see the themes of the show totally embodied by Zuko and Katara as individuals and in their relationship to one another. There’s a YouTuber, sneezyreviews, who has a, like, 2-hour explanation on why she not only loves zutara but also believes that their endgame would’ve actually elevated the writing of atla to new levels particularly because of thematic cohesion and resolved character arcs. It’s the zutara dissertation I never knew I needed, and it’s funny and eloquent and effective, so I’m just going to sum up her section on thematic cohesion to the best of my abilities and then link it for whenever you have the time. And I HIGHLY recommend it, especially if you want a full understanding of what makes zutara so great and gives it such longevity.

Guru pathik has a line that goes something like this: separation is an illusion; things that seem different are just two parts of the same whole. Iroh also tells Zuko something similar: balance and strength are achieved when the different nations come together and influence one another and celebrate what makes them each unique. And this lesson is a massive central arc that both Zuko and Katara go through, moving past a black-and-white, good guys-vs-bad guys, us-vs-them mentality and into a greyer, more nuanced view of the world. Zuko sees the fire nation from an entirely new perspective and while he still loves and hopes for his nations future, he surrenders his blind loyalty to them in exchange for an unflinching loyalty to peace and love. Katara too had to come to terms with the fact that cruel people exist in the earth kingdom and water tribes, while some fire nation citizens are just regular, kind people who also need and deserve to have someone speak on their behalf. And this is honed in directly on how they view each other. They grow in their individual journeys to be open to the humanity in the other and then, once they’ve found that, they’re able to grow more in compassion for others in a beautiful feedback loop. And this is all matched in the symbolism repeatedly and intentionally associated with them in canon: sun and moon, fire and water, yin and yang, Oma and Shu who found love despite their warring nations. Their individual arcs are completed in each other and complement the themes of atla beautifully.

The canon pairs... just don’t. Which, again, is fine. But the very things that give atla longevity and popularity are anchored in zutara. Kat@ang doesn’t accomplish this. They’re... nice. Sweet. Especially when you erase a good portion of their interactions in S3. It could’ve been just a sweet love story. (Personally, the dynamic between toph and aang accomplish the same thing that zutara does, with complementary personalities that fulfill the theme of opposites blending in harmony) M@iko, on the other hand, is less sweet but I think wasn’t even supposed to last. Zuko’s relationship with Mai seems to represent his relationship with his old life as a whole. He can’t be emotionally vulnerable, he’s goaded into abusing his privileges, his agency and opinions aren’t respected. They just don’t have common ground with which to discuss anything that matters, so they don’t. As far as themes, the relationship doesn’t fit with atla. It’s zuko returning to and sticking with what is (on the surface) like him, what’s expected. Fire nation with fire nation. Fluid water bender with the flexible air bender. Like with like, separated from what is different and challenging and complementary.

And all of these things combined of course lead to the potential for the ship. I don’t know how familiar you are with the post-atla canon but... well, miss “I will never turn my back on people who need me”, miss “I don’t want to heal! I want to fight!” ends up living quietly in the SWT as a designated healer who turns a blind eye to the water tribe civil war happening right outside her front door. Which can be fine! People change! Some people just wanna stay inside. I just wanna stay inside! But the potential future for zutara is so much more satisfying, with Katara becoming the most unconventional Fire Lady the uppity old cads who are stuck on the old ways have ever seen. Fanon has her serving as a voice for the other nations within a kingdom at the point of its biggest political upheaval, as a confidante to Zuko who can actually help him while he’s trying to figure out how to move forward and make reparations. They have the opportunity, together, to accomplish what they both have set on their hearts to fight for: positive change that lends itself to harmony and balance. And the steambabies! A popular headcanon is that their firstborn daughter, the crown princess, is actually a waterbender, which causes such an uproar among the people who are adamantly clinging to the old ways. It’s just a future full of potential to be forces for good together, full of trust, intimacy, joy. The exact era of peace and love and balance that zuko announces that he intends to ring in with the start of his reign as Fire Lord is, again, magnified by the very personal zutara relationship. And we love to see it.

tl;dr zutara isn’t for everyone. Some people just don’t vibe with it. Some are nostalgic. Some love the canon they grew up with. Some have been disappointed for years. Some just see themselves in other characters and want their happiness instead. Whatever the reason, that’s fine. But for me, I love the way these two, from the moment they give each other a fair chance, are able to lower their walls and prejudices to see the other for the kindred spirits they are. They see each other’s humanity, and their response is to pour out love and support and compassion. I love that they’re a power couple in battle. I love the symbolism and, honestly, soulmatism that colors their every interaction. I love that they embody the whole storyline of atla in their relationship and how it develops, which is notably why their seasonal arcs always culminate in each finale with how they relate to one another. I love that zuko adopting a waterbending move is what actually saves his life and then katara’s. I love the chemistry! And I love the future they could’ve had, instead of the ones they were given.

So, in conclusion: I just think they’re neat and I hope you do too, at least a little bit. Even if it’s just respectfully from a disinterested distance cause you do you. And now here is the video I mentioned. I’m sorry this post got so long and then I gave you an even longer homework assignment, but I can’t recommend it enough. She says it all better than I can.

youtube

#zutara #atla #zutara rant #like really the way the canon relationships were written throughout s3 #it would’ve been more believable for zutara to happen #or at least be hinted at #all of the major issues presented in those relationship were dug up extensively and then... never resolved #and then they just slapped some kisses on a screen and said ‘there all better’#and we just kinda had to say ‘oh ok guess it’s all better then’#this got long I’m sorry #I wrote it all out and then tumblr ate 2/3 of it #which is why it took so long #and what I’ve written now doesn’t even match what I had before #because there’s too much to say about why I love zutara #and the stuff I left out the first time is what came out this time #rip to my original thoughts but this post is different #anyway that’s why this took so long #and I should’ve just made a PowerPoint...#I can do that too if you’d rather not read all of this lol #I won’t be offended #this is incoherent #Alia rambles uselessly #also hoping this doesn’t end up in any wrong tags because I don’t wanna step on toes lol #it’s not anti!! it’s just critical #in a compare/contrast way #I can pinpoint the moment when I started trying to rewrite my points from memory #because everything gets shorter and more succinct #like... I really said all that??? sounds fake and I don’t remember it anyway so here’s the condensed version #with no!! smooth!!! transitions!!!!#also why am I so lazy with proper grammar over text

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smelted-applejuice · 3 years

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Heck yeah man! Platonic husbands just bring so much serotonin! So here's my first request for that. ( I've been craving angst for them im so sorry! ) ( p.s. i already requested this to one person but I have zero idea if they are gonna do it so here it is yeee boi! ) How about the platonic husbands went out to go get something for foolish for the mansion and they left reader ( maybe they are like a kitsune with five tails and are like thirteen) to stay at home with Michael and they come back to basically a bloody scene as Reader and Michael were attacked so Reader had Michael wrapped around in their tails in a protective manner so that he wouldn't get hurt in which reader took all the wounds and stuff and reader is literally knocked out bleeding while Michael only has a few bruises and small cuts.

So sorry for being descriptive. I just have a lot of ideas in mind. Lol

Pairing(s); Platonic Husbands x Reader (PARENTAL), Micheal x Reader (SIBLINGS) Pronouns; she/her Desc; [YourName] protects her brother from a random intruder. TW: Blood, fighting, entry without consent, memory loss,

Requests are open! -

A few weeks ago, Tubbo and Ranboo had taken in a fox hybrid they found in the woods. [YourName] was knocked out and not dressed for the cold weather, but waking up in a warm house around strangers scared [YourName]. Due to how hard she was knocked out, faces became fuzzy in her past life, and names no longer existed. Fear was an understatement, Ranboo and Tubbo were unsure if the hybrid even knew how to speak for the first few weeks. It wasn’t until she croaked out a sob fear and spilled her guts out to Ranboo and Tubbo. Ranboo held the teenager while Tubbo gently rubbed her back, both worried for her. [YourName] explained how faces were fuzzy and she couldn’t remember anything about her family- she was scared and Ranboo understood that feeling. After evaluating [YourName] to make sure she was truly okay, Ranboo talked [YourName] through her anxiety and became a father figure toward her.

Ranboo learned [YourName] was thirteen or fourteen, half fox, and loved a variety of berries. She seemed like the breed Fundy was, so he would have to hunt Fundy down and get information about his habits and how he reacted to certain scenarios- but Tubbo and Ranboo were excited to have another child in their platonic lives. [YourName] and Micheal were already close from the weeks prior when [YourName] silently sat with him while he played or ate. [YourName] was seen as the perfect child to add to their little family dynamic, Micheal would now have a protector and comforted both the platonic husbands when they left. Many trips were taken before this upcoming one, so what would make this trip so much different? Maybe a few more nights would be spent out, but [YourName] seemed okay with staying with her little brother for a while longer.

“[YourName]!” Ranboo called his daughter down, Tubbo sat in the twisty chair spinning as he also waited for the girl. [YourName] came down the ladder and looked at her fathers, “Yes Dadboo?” she with her hands behind her back. Tubbo smiled at her nickname for his husband, “We need to head out for a few nights, you can watch Micheal by yourself, right?” Tubbo asked. [YourName] nodded with a proud smile “Of course, dad! No reason I can't.” she said with confidence.

Tubbo and Ranboo watched with smiles as [YourName] trotted back upstairs after hearing Micheal’s oinks for attention. “We got lucky, Ranboo.” Tubbo said with joy, Ranboo nodded emitting a happy enderman like grunts “We sure did.” he confirmed. The happy giggles from both their children could be heard from the room above them, and all that was felt was warm and fuzzy.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” [YourName] yelled, ignoring the seething pain.

Tubbo and Ranboo stood in front of the doorway, Micheal stood with his older sister. He let go of her hand to give his fathers hugs with [YourName]. “We’ll be home in a week, behave and be safe.” Ranboo said pressing a hand into [YourName]’s head and ruffling her hair. Micheal squealed with joy when Tubbo did the same for him.

The two stepped back, letting their fathers finally leave. Their trip could take them longer than planned, so food was stored in a freezer in that case. [YourName] guided her brother back upstairs where she’d tend to his needs for the next few days. Everything went smoothly and how it usually would go, well, until it didn’t.

[YourName] was in the kitchen prepping beans and rice for her and Micheal when a crash was heard upstairs. She turned the oven off and rushed upstairs to see a hooded figure going right for innocent napping Micheal, “Step away, now.” [YourName] hissed quietly. The figure looked up, its face covered in a black mask.

The figure looked shocked to see another person in the house, so [YourName] took this chance and acted on her need to protect Michael and attacked first. She cringed at the thumping noise and the hard feeling of this random person’s hands roughly fighting to strangle her. The squeal of fear from Michael didn’t help the situation. Her head would get roughly shoved into the wooden floor.

She heard Micheal’s footsteps race around the room for a hiding spot, thank goodness Ranboo and Tubbo managed to teach him that. [YourName] ended up kicking and chi blocking one of the figure’s legs and arms. She had enough time to find a proper weapon but paused in her tracks when she heard Micheal’s panicked squeals. She spun around and went full-on anger mode, her tail stood up and her ears were pressed against her head “LEAVE HIM ALONE!” she yelled ignoring the seething pain in the back of her head. The figure simply laughed and brought up the dagger toward poor Micheal. [YourName] launched forward and bit the man’s arm causing him to drop Micheal, allowing the child to rush away. Now it was just [YourName] and this mysterious character, “What do you want from us? Why do you want to hurt Micheal?” [YourName] asked angrily. The figure didn’t say a thing, just remained silent as it made its next move. Its move would involve [YourName]’s tail getting slightly bent in a direction it simply shouldn’t and multiple stab wombs. Now, the figure hadn’t done what it wanted to, but watching [YourName] bleed out while protecting Micheal was a sight Ranboo wouldn't like either. So his job was done, and he left with no words, a note, and no other actions. He stared at [YourName] holding Micheal behind her and left. The following morning is when Ranboo and Tubbo came back. [YourName] had passed out by now, but was still protectively holding Micheal close. Micheal had some of his sister’s blood on him, but hearing his parent’s voice, he squealed and oinked for assistance. This whole experience last night was so traumatizing he hadn’t slept a wink, he wanted to make sure his sister was alright first. The loud noises hadn’t woken up [YourName], which worried the little guy even more. All the ruckus had definitely gotten Tubbo and Ranboo’s attention, so they rushed up the ladder and were met with the horrifying sight of blood on the floor and trailing toward [YourName]. Micheal got out of his sister’s grasp and rushed forward toward Tubbo and Ranboo, doing his best to explain what happened last night. It didn’t process either parent, they only knew so much of the language their son spoke and was learning more- but his panicked tone told them everything; [YourName] was risking her life for their son. Ranboo was first to step forward, going to check on [YourName] who was luckily still breathing. “Go… go get Phil. Take Micheal with you,” he said in a deadpan-like voice. He was shaking, anger was oozing out of him, he began to glow. He relaxed when he heard Tubbo’s voice confirm he was leaving with Micheal. [YourName] was in her father’s arms as she slept peacefully after her battle. It didn’t help when Ranboo found a note placed neatly on the nearby table. “I warned you.”

#dream smp x reader #ranboo x reader #tubbo x reader #platonic husbands x reader #x reader #mcyt x reader #ranboo x you #ranboo x yn #ranboo x y/n #c!ranboo x you #c!ranboo x y/n #c!randboo x yn #tubbo x you #tubbo x y/n #tubbo x yn #c!tubbo x you #c!tubbo x yn #c!tubbo x y/n

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highlifeboat · 2 years

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i wonder... do people who shit on mia also ever wonder if she was also bound by a confidentiality clause? like i get what she was doing was already illegal and she'd be arrested for it but could whistleblowing have also gotten her into hot water?

SEE, THAT'S WHAT I ALWAYS SAY! Not in that many words, but still.

MIA WORKED FOR A FUCKING CRIME SYNDICATE! You don't think those types of things have cover stories for all their employees? I doubt anybody who worked in The Connections below a certain rank could tell their spouses what they were up to.

And this is a crime syndicate who was working on literal mind control. This wasn't like some punk street gang selling drugs at the local K-Mart, these guys were making military grade bioweapons, smuggling shit, committing murders, money laundering, this was whole operation.

I don't think whistleblowing would have just put her in hot water, it probably would have gotten her and Ethan killed if she told him. Hell, don't they kind of hint at the fact The Connections are hunting them down in Res 8? And that's why Ethan has all these self defense books? They also fully left Mia to die in Dulvey after her whole operation went to shit, so like... Yeah. I fully believe Mia telling Ethan the truth about her job would have gotten both of them killed and she probably didn't want that.

And, while we're on this, Mia wasn't like... involved in making Eveline. She was a researcher who joined after Eveline was already made. We don't even know if Mia actively participated in administering tests on her, she could have just been writing notes and was probably the one who helped make the Necrotoxin. They literally could have hired her to be an imprinting subject for Eveline, because I really doubt they would make Evie imprint on someone who was constantly hurting her. In the end it doesn't matter, Mia still did a lot of shitty things and still participated in a project that experimented on a child, but she isn't like... responsible for making Evie.

I dunno, I feel like some people paint Mia into a bigger villain than she is. She did bad shit. Unethical and morally wrong shit. But she's not like... a criminal mastermind or anything. She spent four years babysitting a ticking time bomb dressed up as a kid. Shit went south, and she never wanted Ethan to get involved in the first place.

ALSO ALSO, people say she should have told him he was mold but like... how do you even begin to bring that up after all the bullshit of the Baker farm. "Hey baby, I know we just went through a horribly traumatic experience but you're actually dead and a mold person so have fun with that"??

And like... I think Mia's kind of paid for all that shit by this point. She spent three years in a living hell, was probably forced to eat rotten and/or human meat, just to get out and then 3 years later get kidnapped and held prisoner (again), have some psycho cult leader impersonate her and kidnap her baby, then loose her husband AGAIN, and is probably living with so much PTSD while she tries to raise her daughter who's working for the BSAA or whatever. She's paid for her crimes, goddamn.

TLDR: Mia would have more than likely been killed (as well as Ethan) if she told Ethan the truth about her job and I think some people make her out to be way worse than she actually is.

#i'm sorry but if y'all hate mia but love miranda i do not trust you because miranda did so much worse shit #like you don't have to like mia #i understand why people hate her and stuff but like... she's not some super villain idk #i'm sorry this just became a mia rant apparently #mia winters #rants #asks #anons

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infernalrevenge · 3 years

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I've never seen anyone talk about it before and I always love your takes on the characters of RE8, so I'm curious about your opinion on this: what do you think Mother Miranda, the three other Lords and Dimitrescu's daughters would see under the influence of Donna's hallucinogenic flowers at House Beneviento? Their minds are already pretty effed-up and they've most certainly been desensitized to a lot of traumatizing things already, I have a hard time trying to figure out what kind of absolute nightmare their worst fears would look like...

Yooo this is a really interesting thing to ponder over, especially since the characters have different experiences and traumas associated with them, based on what we know from canon. But I love the idea of their abstract fears materializing before them, because regardless of what you've been through there has to be something that really shakes you. A lot of them are probably more mental than physical fears.

Hint: I think all of them have one thing in common, and it's that they fear being powerless.

(CW for generally disturbing content, but nothing described too graphically)

For Mother Miranda, I can imagine a version of what Ethan went through in Donna's portion of the game happening to her, but with some adjustments. She was a grieving mother who did everything in her power and reach to try and get her daughter back -- what if she got what she wanted, but not what she expected? A hallucination of a "successful" revival of Eva that goes horribly wrong, and the little girl before her turns into a giant writhing mass of flesh -- an amalgamation of her former creations -- angry, in pain, and easily able to overpower the priestess. No matter how fast she runs, no matter where she hides or escapes to, it always finds her... and it's hungry.

Alcina Dimitrescu already went through a lot in the game itself, unable to stop her three beloved daughters from dying in her own home, where they were supposed to be safe. She's one of the most powerful people in the whole damn village, most likely even the country or the world... but she couldn't stop Ethan Winters from coming in and killing her family in cold blood? I think her greatest nightmare plays into that, but this time, she actually has to watch them die right in front of her. She has to sit in the sidelines as some pathetic manthing smashes every window to let the biting cold in, and she's literally frozen in place, helplessly watching the lights in her daughters' eyes start to go out. She sees a slow, painful demise at the hands of someone she can easily dispose of if only she could fucking move! But she can't, and she's not sure what hurts more -- her aching muscles from being forced to stay still, or experiencing the sickening mix of heartbreak and grief over and over and over again.

This might be a cop out but I'm putting all the Dimitrescu sisters in the same point, since I think they at least have a similar nightmare/fear. I'm having a hard time deciding between watching their mother be the one to suffer at the hands of a mere mortal, or having the tables turn on them where the predators become prey, though the latter is more fun to play with. They enjoy the hunt, the thrill and all the rewards that come with it. They all have somewhat of a sadistic streak to them (maybe one more than others) but they clearly hate the inconvenience of being hurt. But it's not just an inconvenience when you're the one running for your life, unsure if you're in the clear or still being followed. And at this point, they would've been split up, so they can't call for their siblings' help. They're all alone and unable to fend off whatever could be coming for them so all they can do is run. They just don't know how long that tactic will last them.

Karl Heisenberg may be one of the easiest for me to think of? In a way, he definitely fears Miranda, and it's why he bides his time making such a powerful army and weapons in order to take her down. He knows what she's capable of, and he doesn't want to take any chances. His greatest fear is not just a crushing and embarrassing defeat at the hands of Miranda, but spending an eternity as her favorite subject for vivisection. His powers have been stripped away, all but his immortality, so he really is going to feel every incision, every injection, every painful mutation forcing its way through his body... and Miranda just watches with smug astuteness, notebook in hand as she jots down the horrifying changes take place. At least she found a way to make him useful.

Salvatore Moreau is, let's face it, very traumatized and also very dependent and needy. Still, he's a lord (in title) and he wants to be seen as someone important. He wants to be part of something bigger, even if all he may be is a quivering little fish man. I had the hardest time thinking of something for him, but what I've come up with almost seems like the opposite of powerless: Killing Mother Miranda. Yes, obviously she's the source of his anguish and the reason he is this way in the first place, but he is clearly very attached to her. He would worship the ground she walked on if she allowed it, but he's probably used to being ignored. But what if he hallucinates an uncontrollable rampage in the village, and he has to helplessly watch from inside his own body how he brutally murders the only person who had given him a purpose, the only one who may have given him a chance at salvation? He has to watch how he just utterly tears her apart, and can't do a thing about it. I think it'd do a good job of breaking him even more.

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onceupona-chaos · 3 years

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Elain's trauma + (another) lightsinger theory

(This theory is about Elain)

This post was supposed to be just about Elain's trauma, but I decided to use it to share with you one of my theories. So, buckled up, because this will be long!

Warning: This post will be a little about Elriel, but my focus is Elain. If that's not your cup of tea, be warned! Also, as usual, English is not my first language, so forgive for any mistakes. Be kind always!!

So... since I was reading ACOSF for the very first time I noticed how many times Elain's trauma was brought up, especially that time when the Cauldron kidnapped her. I strongly believe that we have enough textual evidence that points to the next book being about her, so I want to talk a little about that trauma and then share my theorie.

Childhood

I'm not going to talk much about it because there is this incredible post right here where the author did an amazing job. But I’ll briefly talk about it just to make sense.

If Nesta was raised to use her "maneuverings", her talents, her dance, Elain was not raised in the same way (not that was good for Nesta, I'm not saying that).

Elain was raised to look pretty, to please others, to not speak up, to get marry using her pretty face, to be a proper lady: a perfect doll.

So she acted like one.

It simply never occurred to her that she might be capable of getting her hands dirty.

Elain would put on a hat and gloves and kneel in the dirt, weeding. She acted like a purebred lady in every regard but that.

Her mother raised her like that until she was at least eleven years old. This is enough time for her to internalize how she should behave.

This is what SJM is trying to tell about Elain:

"I wonder if everyone has spent so long assuming Elain is sweet and innocent that she felt she had to be that way or else she'd disappoint you all"

(Again, check this post for more details, this is just a scratch in comparison)

How this childhood reflects on Elain

Strength:

So, Elain was raised to be passive.

I'm not trying to justify her neglect towards Feyre. Elain has flaws just like any other character. But there's a reason why Feyre and Nesta was filled with rage when they lived in the cottage, and Elain look at it in a different way:

"A shelter from a world that had possessed so little good, but she tried to find it anyway, even if it had seemed foolish and useless to me. She had looked at it that cottage with hope; I had looked at it with nothing but hatred. And I knew which one of us had been stronger."

Since Elain was raised to be passive, her strength is different from her sisters. Her strength comes from her heart, from her kindness. But mostly from her hope. The book tell us that:

"Elain had always been gentle and sweet—and I had considered it a different sort of strength. A better strength. To look at the hardness of the world and choose, over and over, to love, to be kind."

My point is: her strength is different, not weaker. She is a different type of character, one that a lot of women relate to. Her strength isn't brutal. Her strength is hope. In her book, she will look at an indescribable horrible situation that seems to have no way out and will choose not to despair.

Beauty

She ignored me, and saw Elain as barely more than a doll to dress up, but Nesta was hers.

Elain's mother saw her for her beauty and only that. Now look at this:

Elain had gone from lovely to devastatingly beautiful. Elain never seemed to realize it.

She was several years older, and I’d never done anything to provoke her hatred, but I think …”

“She was jealous of your beauty,” Amren said, an amused smile on her red lips.

Elain blushed. “Perhaps.”

In my opinion, Elain has been seen as beautiful and only beautiful her entire life. It's not that she doesn't realize it, but she doesn't want to be reduced to that.

“Pity you didn’t bring the other sister. I hear our little brother’s mate is quite the beauty"

"They say your sister Elain is the beauty."

"They." Elain's beauty is known across Prythian, Eris said that twice in the series. She is so beautiful, that it seems like this is the first thing everyone will say about her.

That's why she wishes to be seen:

"No one ever looked —not really.” A bramble of words. Her voice strained to a whisper. “He did. He saw me. He will not now."

She is described as the most beautiful among the sisters, and one of them is High Lady. So everyone looks at her. However, she wants more than that.

For her, it's vital to be seen.

She wants someone who loves her for who she is. That's why she hoped Graysen would still love her even after she turned Fae.

Trauma

Now that we understand what it means for Elain to be seen, to be loved, can we please stop reducing her trauma to a breakup?

She was: kidnapped from her bed, throw into the Cauldron (we saw what a nice experience that is), changed into something she feared, exposed to all the guards laugh at her and mated to a male who conspired to all of that happen.

Not only that: for months she was lost in her own visions. She didn't even know what was reality anymore:

“I think I was dreaming,” she murmured. “I think I’m always dreaming these days.”

"I hear her—her screaming. With rage. Utter rage…” She shuddered.

And when she was able to understand what she was, a Seer, and "wake up" from whatever "murky realm" she had been, the Wall came down. Which means she faced the Graysen.

Elain genuinely hoped he would love her for who she was despite being Fae. She looked at that situation with the same hope she used to look at the cottage. And how that turned out:

“You belong to him.”

“I belong to no one. But my heart belongs to you.”

Graysen’s face hardened. “I don’t want it.”

He would have been better off hitting her, that’s how deep the hurt in her eyes went.

And then she was kidnapped.

Elain is captured by the Cauldron

SJM used ACOSF to remind us of events that are going to be relevant for the next books and Elain's trauma was repeatedly brought up in ACOSF:

But Elain said, “I went into the Cauldron, too, you know. And it captured me. And yet somehow all you think of is what my trauma did to you.”

“Elain was right. We’ve become so focused on how her trauma impacted us that we forget she was the one who experienced it.”

(...) he understood that Elain had spoken true, claiming the trauma of that memory.

Now, look at how many times Elain being captured by the Cauldron came up.

Elain had been stolen. By Hybern. By the Cauldron, which had seen Nesta watching it and watched her in turn.

Do you not remember the Cauldron kidnapping you, bringing you into the heart of Hybern’s camp?

The Cauldron looked at her. And then took Elain.

“Bad things happened the last time. The Cauldron looked at me. And took Elain.

“I know. I helped rescue Elain, after all.” Az hadn’t so much as hesitated before going into the heart of Hybern’s war-camp.

He’d gone with Feyre into the heart of Hybern’s camp to save Elain—he knew the risk.

These are just a few examples to say: Sarah is setting up her next book by remind us again and again how deep her trauma is.

Now, how did the Cauldron kidnapped her in the first place?

Nesta was already moving, sprinting for where we’d heard that voice. Luring Elain out.

I knew how it had done it.

I’d dreamed of it.

Graysen standing on the edge of camp, calling to her, promising her love and healing.

Graysen promising love and healing: everything she had hope for.

Now, who rescued her?

From the shadows near the entrance to the tent, Azriel said, as if in answer to some unspoken debate, “I’m getting her back.”

Nesta slid her gaze to the shadowsinger. Azriel’s hazel eyes glowed golden in the shadows.

Nesta said, “Then you will die.”

Azriel only repeated, rage glazing that stare, “I’m getting her back.”

And we have this reaction:

Azriel gently removed the gag from her mouth. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, devouring the sight of him as if not quite believing it. “You came for me.” The shadowsinger only inclined his head.

I don't believe it's coincidence that the Cauldron used Graysen's image to lure Elain out, and Azriel was the one who got her back. (I'm dying to get into her head and see her feelings about all of this)

And ACOSF reminded us of this as well:

Azriel stiffened. "I know. I helped rescue Elain, after all.” Az hadn’t so much as hesitated before going into the heart of Hybern’s war-camp.

Repeatedly. We don't know how this characters felt at that moment, we don't have their POV's, but after ACOSF I do think this was a crucial moment for both of them: Elain and Azriel.

Lightsingers

“There are lightsingers: lovely, ethereal beings who will lure you, appearing as friendly faces when you are lost. Only when you’re in their arms will you see their true faces, and they aren’t fair at all. The horror of it is the last thing you see before they drown you in the bog. But they kill for sport, not food.”

"Hunt the kelpies or lightsingers without provocation and you might find yourself trapped here.”

When Cassian explains what is a lightsinger, the book has already remind us again and again the Cauldron took Elain.

We know Nesta fought a kelpie. But what if the reason why we didn't see a lightsinger is because Elain will be the one who will face one?

Lightsingers lure people, appearing as a friendly face: this is exactly what happened when Elain was captured by the Cauldron, when she saw Graysen. We know that was very traumatic for her - she told us that herself.

Elain already experienced what is to be lured, so if anyone could face a lightsinger and survive is her. She wouldn't make the same "mistake" twice.

Graysen standing on the edge of camp, calling to her, promising her love and healing.

There are lightsingers: lovely, ethereal beings who will lure you, appearing as friendly faces when you are lost.

Elain was lost, the last thread that connected her to her humanity had been cut off. The Cauldron used her love for Graysen, her deepest wishes, her hope for a future and turned it all against her.

But when a character is developed, they learn with their mistakes, they get stronger. What it was once a weakness might become their greatest strength, which is something very present in SJM books (The Nephelle Philosophy?) .

Elain's strength comes from her hope, she looks at the darkness of the world and sees the light. If the Cauldron used it once against her, maybe that hope would be precisely how she could break through whatever luring spells lightsinger cast.

There's a reason why SJM remind us again and again about that specific moment, which was without a doubt one of the most important ones between Elain and Azriel, and possibly because we are going to see Elain dealing with her struggles.

But what if there's more? What if that trauma would be the reason why Elain can face a lightsinger and survive?

What if what was once a weakness may become... her strength, her survival?

#pro elain #acotar theory #pro elain archeron

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thegreenwolf · 4 years

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(This post was originally posted on my blog at https://thegreenwolf.com/its-okay-to-not-hustle/)

There’s this meme going around Facebook right now, saying “If you don’t come out of this quarantine with a new skill, your side hustle started, or more knowledge, you never lacked time. You lacked discipline.” Thankfully multiple people have already skewered it, but it continues to be shared around by the sort of person who is trying to one-up everyone else, or who’s just plain clueless–or, for that matter, just trying to guilt you into buying whatever they’re selling.

Now, there’s not a damned thing wrong with self-promotion. That’s how indie artists, authors, and other self-employed folks get the word out. You have to be able to talk good talk in order to get people’s attention. But leading with this meme? Guilting people for not leaping from sudden unemployment straight into the thick of the ever-shifting gig economy? That ain’t gonna fly, Brocephus.

You Have Good Reasons to Slack

Excuse me while I dust off my counseling psych degree a sec, here. *ahem* We are in a very sensitive, turbulent time right now. We’re in the middle of a pandemic, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in a century in the Western world. We are in a hugely traumatizing situation here. Not just for the financial losses, but the fact that COVID-19 has killed thousands of people and left many more with permanent lung damage. We still haven’t gotten a handle yet on exactly how contagious this thing is, how long you’re contagious for, or whether you’re immune once you’ve had it, assuming you survive. We don’t have adequate testing, emergency rooms estimate that for every positive test there are 10-20 people out there infected and untested, and everyone with a cough is suddenly Schroedinger’s COVID case. Governments worldwide are slow to react in spite of the rising death toll. People have had friends and family die horribly from this thing in a short period of time. Even people who didn’t already have issues with anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses are feeling stressed, strained and scared–and, yes, traumatized. This image is guilt-tripping people who are actively being traumatized.

So we’re already starting with a populace that is dealing with this collective trauma, as well as whatever personal trauma each individual is experiencing. Not always easy to seize the day when you’re going through that. And I can think of a few other reasons that might further complicate this whole “Just get a side gig!” thing:

–They’re a parent who suddenly has all their kids at home, all the time, demanding time and attention and food, AND they still have to work eight hours a day from home, or maybe even more if their S.O. is unemployed/sick/etc. By the way, if someone trots out Isaac Newton or William Shakespeare or some other historical guy who managed to do epic things during a pandemic, remember that they usually had wives or servants to do all the laundry and cooking and cleaning and (if applicable) childcare for them.

–They’re disabled or chronically ill, and don’t have the ability/energy/etc. to just go and make something happen, just like that. Imagine if you just randomly got the fatigue from a really bad flu, and you never knew whether it was going to last a day or a month. And if you tried exerting yourself when you were feeling better, chances are you’d slip back into fatigue-land. That’s what a lot of my chronically ill/etc. friends have to deal with, to say nothing of issues with accessibility of resources for starting a side gig.

–They don’t have any money for the supplies needed to start a side hustle, or the supplies have been hoarded by hobbyists preparing for a Pandemic Staycation.

–They don’t have the skills for something that just requires what they already have (like, for example, writing on a laptop you already happen to own). Often these skills are things that can’t be perfected in a few weeks at home, but may take years to develop before they’re really marketable–like, for example, the skill to make a decent living on side hustles.

–They have anxiety, depression or other mental health conditions that make it hard to function even in the best of times, but even moreso in this…well…mess. Even people who were mentally healthy before are going to be developing diagnosable anxiety and depression disorders before all’s said and done. And speaking from personal experience, those of us who look successful on the outside can still be internally hamstrung by these conditions at times.

–Plus there’s the fact that we’re not supposed to, you know, leave our homes, which narrows down the field of potential side gigs by a lot.

Even doing something less financially-wrought like learning a new skill or subject takes time, energy, and sometimes money, any or all of which may be scarce for the reasons above and more.

Comparison is the Thief of Joy

I am saying all of this as someone who is arguably an expert on the side gig. I have spent the past eight and a half years 100% self-employed (and a lot longer doing it part-time) as an author and artist, able to cover all my bills and expenses, and for a time I was the primary breadwinner of a multi-person household. I have like ten different things I was doing for a living before this all hit, a pretty diverse set of streams of income, even if most of them just up and evaporated in the past few weeks. And while I’m definitely a hell of a lot leaner now than I was a month ago, I still have my head above water for the moment. So I think I know side gigs.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m overall healthy. I have a dog who is a lot less demanding of my time than kids would be. I have my own space where I can focus more or less without interruption. More importantly, I have the skills, the knowhow, the drive and the personality to go out and seek new opportunities. And I’m used to fluctuations in income, though admittedly this one’s unprecedented. Don’t gauge yourself by where I am now. I’ve spent twenty-two years building up my art business, my first book came out in 2006, and I’ve had a series of really good opportunities come my way that I had the privilege to be able to make the most of. I am not your measuring stick, so don’t say “Well, if she can do it why can’t I? I must suck!”

If you’re feeling crappy because you aren’t hopping to it and carpeing the diem and getting everything done, here’s what I have to say to you: Look, you just had your world turned upside-down. Job loss, scarce commodities, sudden lack of outside childcare, restricted movement and inability to be around much of your support system, and did I mention a pandemic is happening, too? Any single one of those things would be difficult for just about anyone to deal with, never mind all at once. And I don’t even know what all else has already been going on in your life–unstable or unsafe living situation, other health issues, breakups and other losses, interpersonal conflicts. You know, normal life stuff.

You’re Not Lazy, or Screwing Up, or (Gods Forbid) Undisciplined

It is totally okay if all you’re doing right now is surviving. It’s okay if you feel like you’re drowning, overwhelmed by all that’s happening both on a global level and more personally. It’s okay if all you can manage right now is to get out of bed and stumble through each day a moment at a time, struggling with a tidal wave of emotions. It’s okay if you’re just trying to keep your kids busy, dealing with a crowded home every single day, or trying to keep COVID-19 at bay. It’s okay if, instead of firing up DuoLingo or opening an Etsy shop, you spend your evenings vegging to Netflix or reading a book or playing hours and hours of Animal Crossing.

Not every moment in your life has to be about being productive even in the best of circumstances, and that goes exponentially so right now. Be patient with yourself, and be kind. You may be one of those folks who literally has to spend all their time scrabbling to try to cover the bills or get some leeway from bill collectors, and you have to dedicate your waking time hunting for resources just to try to get through this week. Believe me, I feel for you, I have a lot of friends in that situation right now, and I hope all of you can find some relief and assistance.

May I suggest something? If you have the energy for something more than the bare essentials of getting by, put that energy toward self-care, whatever you can manage under the circumstances. You can use it to recuperate, to rebuild your emotional and physical resilience. That way if things get rough again in the future, you have more internal reserves to build on. If your usual methods don’t work or aren’t accessible due to lockdown, ask others what they’re doing to keep themselves grounded in this trying time.

Just because you have more time doesn’t mean you don’t have to throw yourself right into something productive! Don’t feel pressured to just go-go-go the moment you have a little freedom to move. If you do decide you want to try a side gig, or a new skill, or learn all about some specialized topic of interest, go for it! If you have the energy and attention and opportunity to pursue something new, it can be a great coping skill during this traumatic time. Just don’t pressure yourself; keep it fun.

One last thing: I want you to save the image I have at the top of this post. And then if you see someone post that meme, saying “Come on, you lazy bums, get up and make that side gig happen! Learn new stuff! Do all the things! No excuses!” you pull out this version, and you look at the edits, you remember that it’s okay to be where you are, and you get back to doing things at your own pace no matter what someone else says. (I find visualizing stapling a printout of the edited version to the offender’s forehead to also be therapeutic, but that may just be me.)

Hang in there, okay? It’s going to be a rough time, but you’re not alone, and what you’re feeling right now is shared by so many people. So just let yourself be where you are in this moment, and we’ll see what hope tomorrow brings. And remember that whatever you’re capable of in this moment: it’s enough.

Did you enjoy this post? Please consider supporting my work on Patreon, buying my books here on my website, buying my art and books on Etsy, or tipping me at Ko-fi!

#COVID-19 #mental health #executive dysfunction #anxiety #depression #mine

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lexsssu · 3 years

Text

Shall We Date: Worship Me AU - Uriel (Avatar of Chastity)

What if the MC gets transported to the Celestial Realm instead? What if the angels were the love interests?

GENERAL HCs

Uriel — “The Flame of God/God is my Light”

Has a penchant for perfection

Give him a task and you bet your ass he’ll come back finished with results so phenomenal you’re sure that if you did it, there’s no way it would turn out this great

Reserved, but not exactly anti-social

It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk about himself whenever people ask about him, but it’s just that he thinks there are a million other things that are worth more to converse about than his exploits or the things he enjoyed

Chastity doesn’t just mean staying pure by abstaining from sexual relations and the lack of temptations one experiences, but being placed in the face of temptation and yet staying true to one’s morals. This is why Uriel doesn’t condemn anyone who decides to engage in such acts, whether within the sanctity of marriage or not, whether it is done because all parties hold sincere feelings for one another or not.

Gone is the ancient time and the rules that once applied then cannot be the same for current times. This is why Uriel has made it his mission to continuously study about humans, to stay up to date with the way they thought and felt so as he can better serve as a guiding beacon to them

When he’s not busy with his regular duties, you would normally find Uriel at the Celestial realm’s library with stacks of reference books on his table. Time is nothing to them, which is why for him it felt as if humans changed too quickly in so little time

An ideology that may have taken decades or centuries to form is but a blink of an eye to them which is why Mr. Perfectionist can’t help but immediately want to be informed in the hopes that it will help him improve himself

If he doesn’t keep adding and updating to his knowledge then how can he even hope to be one of the guiding virtues of humanity with outdated ideals?

Ideals can and will change over time, but his morals are the one thing that Uriel will never change.

His mind and body may be corrupted over time, because eternity is such a long time indeed, but the morals that made him who he is, what HE is will always stay the same

Tbh you can’t tempt this guy with anything

If you do manage to “tempt” him, know that you didn’t actually succeed but he just liked/pitied you enough to go with whatever fuckery you wanted him to commit

That's why he normally agrees with whatever bullshit his twin brother, Gabriel, tries to wrangle him into

Uriel ain't doing it because Gabriel tempted him, but because he loved his twin so much that he's willing to indulge him whenever he wanted to fuck shit up

Gabriel is the one who starts messes and Uriel is the one who just lets him be, because he's a supportive big brother

...Much to most of the other virtues' ever increasing stress

Is an advocate of "actions speak louder than words"

He's a serial head-patter

Will boop your nose when he notices you're a bit too lost in your thoughts

Azrael is normally the victim of his headpats and nose-boops

Since he makes it his job to know all that IS known, he finds some modicum of interest in that of the UNknown

Things like extraterrestrial beings for example. Basically, anything that didn't belong to any of the 3 worlds was within his scope of interest

If you check his YouTube history you'll see it's filled with UFO sightings, conspiracy theories, UMAs, etc.

Probably joined that raid in Area 51 while undercover—

Asks Gabriel to bring him souvenirs and pictures whenever his job takes him to a location near hotspots for UMAs, UFOs, and other strange otherworldly phenomena

Reminds Azrael every now and then to inform him if he ever ferries a soul that had come across any UMA and ask them about their encounter

As the virtue of chastity, it's up to him to teach the little cherubims about the birds and the bees as part of their training to become full-fledged angels

More often than not, his terminology and clinical way of explaining has traumatized most of the little ones…

...much to Raphael's increasing stress

"And then the man will place his pe*** inside the woman's va**** where he would start thrusting continu—"

What's worse is that he even has diagrams for it

So many little cherubims lost their innocence to Uriel-sensei…

He doesn't purposely try to annoy Raphael unlike Gabriel, it's just that his actions and way of going about things aren't the way most people would fo it and what's worse is that he unintentionally traumatizes people

And it's usually up to Raphael to do damage control on all the virtues' behalf

Raphael almost killed him that day he had to give that talk to Luke and his batch

"...What's wrong about telling them what happens between a man and a woman? It's biology and something that's done frequently by humans"

He doesn't see the point of beating around the bush when their purpose was to teach the new recruits about humanity and everything about them, including how they reproduce

Favorite food is pancakes…

...because they look like flying saucers

Uriel enjoys stargazing at night, not just to look at the heavenly bodies but to spot any UFOs if he's lucky enough

He isn't particularly bad at cooking, but he's not great either

Pancakes are what he's most confident in cooking and he makes the best darn ones in all of the celestial realm

If he's the only one left at home and you're sick, don't expect chicken soup and be ready instead for a stack of warm and fluffy pancakes topped with some butter and generous helping of syrup, whipped cream, berries, and etc.

When the day finally comes that he falls in love with someone...the 3 worlds will know true fear—

But legit though, all those millennia of being a single pringle and practicing so much restraint flies out the window when this man finds himself utterly and deeply in love with you

JP VA: Daisuke Ono

ENG VA: Matthew Mercer

ROMANTIC HCs

He's read so much about the different forms of love and has felt them all except for romantic love so he's a bit rattled at first

Probably coops himself up in his room for a day or two to get his bearings

When he does finally step foot out of his room, there isn't any obvious changes at first but you can't help but feel that there's something different about Uriel

Uriel is now a man on a mission

As perfectly as he executed his tasks for millennia, as fierce as he wielded his flaming sword during the Great War against the rebels, and as ruthless as he was when he faced the truly wicked…

…Uriel will have you

Of course, regardless of how much he wanted you to become his that didn't mean he suddenly turned into some sort of barbaric brute that kidnapped women for sport

He will study you so thoroughly that at times it almost feels like he knows you more than you know yourself

The little mannerisms you make during your everyday life that escape your notice? It's a given that Uriel has seen and already safely filed them away in his mind for future reference

"...She likes pointing with her lips?...Cute…" What he wouldn't give to catch you doing that while he was with you so he could partake of your lips as well—

Once he’s interested in you, only God knows at this point what has to be done for him to even lose a small bit of it

You have essentially become a key figure in Uriel’s world

Uriel always has you at the back of his mind to the point that it could even be called obsessive

However, he’s still the virtue of chastity so you don’t have to worry about him ever forcing himself upon you or anything of that sort

He’s super clingy and sorta weird, but he loves you and the last thing he wanted is for you to become sad because of him or anything else

Though he honestly can’t deny that seeing the myriad of expressions on your face, from happiness to sadness, to surprise, excitement, anger, and etc. was one of his favorite hobbies ever since falling for you

Despite his earnest wish to make you his, Uriel surprisingly takes a long time to even confess

He’s a perfectionist so it’s a given that he’ll take everything into account, including how he’ll make you fall for him first before he even thinks about confessing

Bothers Raphael for some “research material” on how to woo you a.k.a. borrow some romance manga despite Raph’s initial protests

For the sake of his own sanity, Raph begrudgingly lends Uri his stash of romance manga

It’s both hilarious and somewhat disturbing to see how taken he is with something other than work and UMAs

Amused: Michael, Cainabel, Gabriel, Simeon

Scared/Disturbed: Raphael, Luke

Neutral/Confused: Seraphiel, Azrael

Secretly plays the alto saxophone, but doesn’t deem his skill worthy enough for you to hear so he practices when he’s absolutely sure that no one is there to hear him when his skills aren’t yet up to his standards

Lowkey jealous when you hangout with the demon brothers and tries to find ways to distract you from hanging out with them

“ I seem to have seen a creature most extraordinary earlier. I believe it was one of the UMAs detailed in the tome for mysterious dwellers of the nether. Mayhaps you’d like to accompany me on a hunt? ”

His face is as straight-laced as it always is, but if you knew him long enough and looked closer, you’d notice that his ears seemed to have the slightest twinge of redness to them.

Honestly speaking, he tries to be a smooth and cool boi when it comes to you, but this dork seems to lose all his tact when faced with the radiance of your eyes and the intensity of your smile

With how long it takes him to make everything perfect before he woo’s you, time and space itself will cease to exist before he finally deems himself ready

So you have to do the wooing yourself and show him that you love all of him, imperfections and quirkiness included

#lexsssu writes #obey me #shall we date obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me masters #obey me oc #obey me angels

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ziracona · 3 years

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What do you see happening after Josh is being rescued? Does he meet everyone of his friend eventually or some of them keep their distance? I read one of your answers about them abandoning him and honestly I don't think they didn't care at all about him, but the events were so traumatic and scary that they probably had a hard time taking into consideration that small possibility of him being alive. Plus I guess it's also part of the smooth flow of the game if it makes sense, Mike doesn't go after Jess either after he sees her falling into the mines and accuses Josh of killing her without being 100% sure that she is dead and without seeing Josh around when shit happened to her. But if I were Josh maybe I would be upset knowing they didn't come for me at all. So how would a reunion go?

That’s valid! You can interpret the lack of an interest in rescuing Josh to multiple things—that they are very sure he’s dead, if you want to be as generous as possible to them. That they think he’s probably dead and are afraid of dying too more than willing to save him, that they’re (sans Chris) too mad about the prank he pulled, etc. And I can see why people would go for any number of them. I think to me it has always read like they think he is probably dead, and the whatever he has, 30%, 20% chance? Of still being alive just isn’t enough for them to feel motivated to face very likely death to go hunting for him, especially with flamethrower dude just dead doing the same. Which makes /me/ angry, because Mike went batshit after seeing Jess wounded and dragged through a window and more trying to save her, multiple characters can kill themselves trying to save the others in the finale, etc, and I just think if you /can/ save someone who is your friend—or like, you have a shot anyway—you don’t know it is too late. You should. (& true Jess can still be alive and Mike will assume she is dead, but in his defense, so do basically all blind playthroughs she looks like she falls four stories or something while already almost dead I can’t fault Mike for assuming that was a 100% death there. Boy really tried. Whereas Josh’s vanishing from the shed is much less confirmed. There is no ‘I watched him fall’ here. Just a neither he nor his dead body were still in the shed so /something/ happened). Like I do get it, that’s a terrifying situation and not helping doesn’t = not caring, but I will hold it against characters if they don’t risk themselves to save their friends and I will be unhappy with them. Loyalty is very important to me. But it is a truly terrifying situation.

But I also get why they’d be terrified to go out there. I don’t think it makes them evil to not want to risk it till they have to, it just makes me disappointed in them. I don’t think I said I think they didn’t care about him—typo if I did, because I certainly don’t think that at all! I think Chris was traumatized and felt very sure he was dead, Ashley didn’t care (she explicitly says she thinks he deserves it and tries to stop Chris from saving him the first time), Emily doesn’t care a lot one way or another and is mostly on her own trauma right now and thinking about Matt and the awful shit she saw, that Sam does care but thinks he is probably dead and is in team mom mode and cares more about trying to keep as many friends alive as possible right now than anything else and doesn’t want to lose the others, and Mike is still pissed but also feels very bad and would prefer for Josh to make it but is also more focused on group survival and not losing anyone else since he just lost someone he loves horribly (based largely on how his reaction to the safe room scenario is either to kill Emily and feel awful but do it because he very vocally and visibly doesn’t want the others to be killed and she won’t go peacefully, and he’s terrified of losing them, or to try but not be able to because he loves Emily, and instead give the gun to the others to try to save themselves with in the event she /does/ turn). And although he’s a right coward bastard for leaving Josh if Josh gets grabbed instead of killed, down in the mines, I do think he cared about Josh. He seems truly sorry to some extent when he finds him, and does /try/ to lead him out of the mines. At the point they make the decision to go for the cable car key, I don’t think they don’t care at all, except Ashley. I just think they should care more. Although I tend to give Chris a pass because he just watched a man get beheaded, has strong reason to think Josh is dead, is injured, and spends the entire rest of the game more or less in traumatized mode quiet in the corner.

But that said I can also see why people would interpret the reactions to mean they all believe he is very dead, and mean they’re going after his corpse! I can see lots of basis in-game to interpret in quite a number of ways. And be generous to the fool kids if you want to! I /super/ hold abandoning Josh in the mines wildly against Mike, but Mike is still one of my favorite characters in the whole game. I love how flawed the cast is and that you go in hating most of them and only slowly grow to care because you don’t want them dead-dead, which keeps you there long enough to see some of their good sides. *cheff’s kiss* the great ability of the horror genre. The bar to initially invest is so low, it lets you have such a multi-faceted cast.

Okay anyway, original question! What do I see happening after Josh gets rescued and exorcised.

I think he meets up with all of them again eventually. Interesting to think from Josh’s pov how he’s going to feel. I expect to some degree he does feel abandoned, and fairly, and in RoB it is very clear he is afraid to some extent of Mike and Chris after being dragged off and tied up and left in the shed, and the things they said to him. He also /definitely/ feels massively guilty and self-blaming about all of it. He’s telling himself through Hill that no one will come for him and it’s his own fault by the final chapter. And mostly he’s just afraid of Mike and in ptsd dissociating mode by the time Sam and Mike find him. So, mixed feelings on his part I expect. Lots of fear and pain and hurt at being abandoned and so universally believed capable of murder, hurt, left to die alone in the mines. Pretty damn betrayed, and that on top of the hurt from what happened to his sisters and the inherent paranoia of paranoid schizophrenia. Hurt that they just left him. Hurt they didn’t believe him. Hurt nobody came for him until it was too late. Hurt he got betrayed again. Probably pretty miserable overall. But with that, also feels really bad about going too far and hates and blames himself intensely for everything, and I expect is also kind of not just traumatized but ashamed of what happens to him, and everyone knowing about the possession and the cannibalism. Probably he wants to lock himself in a room in the corner of a big house and never come out. But also is intensely and miserably and hopelessly lonely. Probably feels all of his friendships are likely broken beyond repair.

I don’t think they are though. Chris “I’m not your bro” six seconds later “bro are you for real?” Hartley almost dies trying to save him and wouldn’t care about the possession stuff except to be worried about him. Sam is angry and harboring some resentment, but clearly reacts to Mike reporting he is gone with regret. Mike would probably feel very guilty for leaving him and be hesitant to reconnect and then defensive doing it, but I think he cares. Jess wasn’t even there for this shit so probably she does. Same for Matt maybe? Ashley and Emily are harder to guess for. I think Ashley would be incredibly angry and resentful—I mean she wants him dead in-game, but might eventually join the others if the others got over stuff? Bc she’s also kinda a joiner? Really it’s hard to say she is a very...hair-trigger character. Volatile and intensely and massively changeable. Probably the least predictable of all. That kind of person scares me deeply in real life because I have been very backstabbed by them before. >.> But anyway hard to say. Also a lot of this depends on what ending, even assuming they all live. But I usually assume that like, Mike almost shot Em, didn’t, Matt tried to save her, Sam saw the workshop, etc ending. Emily I really don’t know. She’s a very self-reliant and hard person. She didn’t have anything very specifically for or against Josh with her experience, but wasn’t that close to him before, so I think she just kinda falls wherever she falls.

I think mostly though that they’d reconnect. Definitely Chris would jump to it, and I think Sam would too—she’s a well educated, empathetic and understanding person. She’d know he needs her. And Chris is his childhood best friend and cares the whole game. I think Mike would try to go too because of guilt, and because he’s a decent guy. Probably so would after not much time those least effected by what Josh did. I think Josh would be alone while being exorcised and probably reocvering in a hospital some after, and Chris would be the first, or Chris and Sam possibly. I think he’d be afraid to see them, and it would be complicated and messy and painful for them all, but it would be okay and sort itself out and they’d find old ground quickly. And having them there would be /incredibly/ vital to helping him recover. I think eventually he’d get back on his feet, and a lot of his old friends would be around and stay in his life. I think things would get better. I’d say the OG ExorJosh comic writer I think did a good job of guessing about what a lot of it would be like. Hard, and slow, and messy. But a lot of them care for him, and I think that would matter enough to help things get okay between them again.

#ask #anonymous #until dawn #long post #Josh Washington #spoilers #exorjosh #exor-Josh

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zerobotic · 3 years

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Well, you asked for it and you can’t say I didn’t warn you :3

First off, the usual disclaimer that I did enjoy DH2. I thought it had some very interesting level design ideas with the clockwork mansion and crack in the slab, the new powers were very cool and fun to use, and it polished some of the rough edges from the first game’s mechanics. It’s just the story and such that disappointed me after how much I loved the first game.

So to start off here’s some of the things I found disappointing or frustrating (and keep in mind these are all just my personal feelings on the games):

“Spoiled rich person learns a lesson from poverty tourism” is a plot that gets on my nerves in general and that’s more or less what happened here with Emily’s story

Like, not to disagree with an anti-rich-people story but the first one did a much more poignant job of highlighting greed and corruption and letting you be the one actually fighting it, rather than putting you in the position of perpetuating it. It felt like the first game showed it, while the second game just preached about it.

Boy this sure did feel out of character for both Corvo and Emily. Emily watched her mother be murdered at ten years old for the sake of political power, and then was held hostage for six months while being told her father was executed for her mother’s death. She got a firsthand view of how much the people of the empire were suffering during this time, and then when she finally got rescued she was immediately kidnapped and used as a pawn again by yet more schemers after her mother’s throne. You cannot tell me that’s a person who would grow up to be spoiled and carefree and complacent with their position, or someone who wouldn’t give a shit about their people. Yes, I know that she was a headstrong, rebellious kid with an adventurous streak, and I’m not trying to claim she wouldn’t probably still prefer, on some level or another, to escape to the rooftops with a sword rather than being stuck in court. I’m just saying that kids grow up and change and whoever wrote the second game seems to be stuck on taking ten-year-old Emily at face value for her adult self’s personality too, instead of considering how the first game’s events might have actually influenced her. She’s got more than enough firsthand experience to know to be wary of scheming nobles. (Also I definitely got the feeling, playing the first game, that at least a bit of how Emily behaved at the Hound Pits was her trying to cope with what was happening.) You also can’t tell me that Corvo, father and royal protector of the current empress, man with the most reason and justification to be paranoid out of everyone in the whole damn empire after everything he’s been through, would be so negligent in paying attention to a coup that the first mission claims pretty much everyone in Dunwall knew was happening.

Building off of that, in general it felt like the first game wasn’t allowed to have much of an impact. It pays lipservice to Jessamine’s death, and acknowledges Corvo having been a badass back then, but that’s....about it? Like I said in the other post, the first game felt so saturated in grief, both for Jessamine and for everything else going on in Dunwall, that it really influenced the overall tone of the game. The second one kinda feels like the first one never happened, or at least didn’t have any lasting influence on the characters or world, and it’s kind of jarring going from one to the other.

So with all that said, here’s my idea for a different DH2. Still using Karnaca as the setting and Delilah as the primary antagonist, just...different.

"Delilah wants to use a reality-altering painting to change the world into her vision of it” is still a plot point. Except, instead of the end of the game, it’s the beginning. It’s a logical extension of her actions and powers during the Daud DLC - the plan to use Emily’s painting to take over almost worked til it was stopped, so there’s clearly potential there. She’ll just think bigger, more direct this time.

The game starts on a ship. Emily and Corvo are en route to Karnaca for some sort of diplomatic mission. We get to know them a little bit during this opening trip: Emily isn’t an absent, complacent ruler, she's a young woman who inherited a difficult throne as a child, after a series of traumatic events, and now she's trying hard to live up to her mother's legacy and prove herself worthy to an empire that still seems to only see her as the child she was during the interregnum. She’s doing her best, but she’s insecure about all of that, and spends a lot of time frustrated with the back and forth scheming of the nobles, trying to please everyone instead of putting her foot down and getting things done. Corvo is trying to keep her safe where he failed Jessamine, but court still isn’t his preferred arena either.

The night before they’re due to arrive in Karnaca, we start getting hints that something is...off. Strange dreams, maybe?

They land in Karnaca and things are different than expected. But they don’t get time to look around, because there's guards there to arrest them, claiming they’re wanted criminals. They’ve got music boxes or something that can strip Corvo of his powers, and only one of them gets away while the other is taken. The one that gets away is stuck alone, disoriented, and hunted in an unfamiliar city - even if you play as Corvo, things are different than he remembers. More different than can be explained by just time.

They meet Meagan Foster. She takes them to meet a group of ex-whalers (the player character doesn’t know who they are). They’re a group that got back in touch with each other in Karnaca after Daud left and the whalers split, and they still do shady shit, but these days it’s generally more smuggling type stuff and they’ve put down the assassin blades. They’re the equivalent of the loyalist home base in this game. Meagan is still the Samuel stand-in, taking the player places and narrating things as necessary.

Information is shared and the player finds out that somehow, the world is changed from what they remember. Delilah is the empress, here, come by it what seemed like legitimately at some point in the 15 years between Jessamine’s death and now, and Emily and Corvo are wanted criminals. No one seems aware of the change except for the player and the whalers (who only remember it because of their experience with magic, though the player character doesn’t learn that til much later).

Clearly it’s Delilah who did something, because she has magic, and she’s the one on the throne now.

The Outsider shows up in their dreams that first night in the new world, but something is clearly wrong in the void, too, and it seems like he’s barely capable of reaching out and communicating with them. He offers the mark, but disappears before really getting a chance to explain anything.

The player goes through the game now with the goal of finding out what happened, how it happened, and how it can be fixed. DH2 and DOTO explained a lot more than I felt they should’ve, at times, and I preferred how the first game balanced worldbuilding with mystery. So, let things be explored and figured out along the way.

Things are real bad in this universe. From Emily's perspective as she goes through the game, we get commentary questioning whether or not she was doing a good job, and comparing it to how things are in Delilah's world. There’s lots of corruption and poverty and people suffering, and the question "is this just Delilah's world? How much of this going on in mine too? In trying to navigate court instead of putting my foot down, was I failing my people in the end after all? Would it have been better if my mother was still the empress?" The difference between this and what DH2 did is that she was trying, there was just a lot hindering her, including her own doubts. In this one, those questions aren’t preaching, they’re a sign that she does care and is pained by the idea of her people suffering like this again, by the mere possibility that it might not be just Delilah’s world.

Corvo and Emily have distinct perspectives, not just the same lines very slightly altered.

The bloodfly infestations are either 1) a natural thing that wasnt supposed to turn ugly like this and has been affected by Delilah’s magic, or 2) wholly the product of unnatural magic. None of this "we need them and they’re always like this, just not this bad" stuff. if you're gonna repeat the plague motif, make it actually horrifying, like the rat plague was. In fact, there’s obvious magic influence here and there in general - maybe not quite as thorough as at Brigmore Manor, but it’s present enough to give you the creeping feeling that things aren’t right, here, visual confirmation of Delilah’s influence, that things have been changed and twisted from their normal state of things. Hell, maybe this is where the hollows from DOTO come in, the original world and Delilah’s altered version of it trying to bleed through each other in some spaces. Maybe that’s a different explanation for the crack in the slab mission, even.

Actually, if you’re gonna repeat the plague motif, lean into the similarities between the rat plague era and now. Have them be reminded here and there by things they see, recount what happened and how terrible it was, compare it to now. Give NPCs lines about the comparison and how some of them left Dunwall only to be stuck living through something like this a second time. Let the first game have happened and had an impact, folks, cmon.

On a similar note, if you’re gonna keep Delilah's backstory the same when we finally learn it, let Emily and Corvo get mad about it. They lived through the first game - what right does Delilah have to talk like she's got a monopoly on suffering and that's why she should have the throne?

Delilah's mistake was assuming Emily was a sheltered child who wouldn’t come for her, rather than someone who's already been through a lot and come out on top. That was almost a satisfying thing about the second game but they messed up the execution of the whole concept and I want it to actually pay off.

I’m not sure if the targets in this one should be the same or how much should change there. Honestly, except for Breanna, the targets in DH2 felt a lot less relevant to what was going on than the DH1 targets did, like...why are half these people even at this ritual? But for simplicity’s sake let’s keep it as close as we can, while also adjusting for the fact that this reality has been tailor-made for Delilah and her buddies. Perhaps the Duke is only the Duke here because things were rewritten to put one of Delilah’s allies in charge, and it was supposed to still be his father. Hypatia isn’t the crown killer (what even was that plot point honestly), she’s the doctor they found to help Delilah recover after her time in the void, and now they’ve rewritten things to imprison her in the institute to keep her quiet and out of the way, and you get wind of it and go to see what she knows. Etc. Is Sokolov involved in this version of things? I dunno! But speaking of Sokolov I want some sort of explanation for where the other surviving loyalists are, damnit.

Delilah did something in and to the void, just like in canon, but it actually has a visible impact here (beyond just a total aesthetic redesign of the void between games that never gets commented on). The void is struggling under her influence when you find shrines, and you never know what you're gonna find at one of them, or what the Outsider is gonna be like, if he even shows up. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the way DH2 gave him a human backstory, because I liked the mystery there behind what he was and what the void was, but this is open to go either way, either with Delilah finding his death site like in canon, or some other way she found to influence it. I’m not sure how the progression would go of how the void changes over the course of the game, but it would be cool to get to help/save the Outsider in some kinda way.

Finding Corvo's childhood home should have more impact. Let it be like when you find the saferoom in Dunwall tower, in the first game. A temporary refuge in a dangerous place, full of obvious memory and grief - not so much for the time spent here since that's so long in the past, but for all that's been lost, everything they've been through and are in the middle of going through. Especially if you're playing Emily - this is the home of the father she just lost.

Let the heart be vague and ominous again, and let our interactions with it be sad, especially as Emily! I’m still messed up about the first time I heard "the doom of Pandyssia has come to the city" in DH1, and the lines about the floodwaters and the plague victims, give me stuff like that! Especially in a world that isn’t meant to exist the way it currently is, where things have been twisted almost beyond recognition. And give me lines that remind Emily of the mother she lost and how this is the first time she's heard her voice since she was a child!

Give us more on citizens and how they're suffering in this world, the way the first game showed us plague victims who died in each other's arms, journals from the desperate and dying, living people sent to the flooded district. Let it be a reminder to Emily why it's worth it, why she has to change the world back and what she wants to be fighting for when she gets her throne back. Another reason to question - has she been doing all she can? (Alternatively, a source of righteous fury for high chaos Emily.)

This is a journey of self discovery for Emily, either low or high chaos. It's about realizing she hasn’t been doing all she could, despite her intentions, because she's been trying to please everyone and in the end it still wasn’t good enough. She needs to stop living under her mother's shadow and come into her own (and the heart plays a role in this epiphany, probably. This might actually come to a head when she has to let her mother's spirit go, if we're gonna keep that plot point.)

High chaos Emily is similar but in a more "alright no more nice empress" kinda way whereas low chaos is more about conviction to put her foot down to do what's right.

You meet people during the game who in a good ending become part of her new council. Common people, who are more in touch with what needs to be done. It pisses nobles off but she's determined to do better, after everything. It helps both her and Corvo come to terms with the whole safety thing, because you can't ever make sure you're totally safe but you can try to make sure the empire can keep going should something happen to its ruler.

In fact, part of Corvo's perspective on this game probably would involve him still wanting to keep Emily out of things for safety's sake, and wondering if sheltering her from knowledge of magic and such contributed to this situation.

When it's revealed who the whalers are, it's late in the game after we've already come to like them a lot. They don't betray you like the loyalists did, but it should still feel like a punch to the gut for Emily and Corvo.

They don’t know where Daud is, haven’t seen him since the whalers disbanded .

Billie talks about that whole thing, and it's complicated. She decides maybe she should try to find him, after all. Cue DLC, which is about finding Daud, and helping/saving him, and the two reconciling and Billie finding some kind of...if not redemption, then absolution. A parallel to the first game’s DLC, Billie getting an arc like that in Emily’s game the way Daud got that arc in Corvo’s game. Y’know, instead of DOTO going and undoing all of Daud’s character growth.

I know I’m kind of handwaving the actual mechanics of who the targets are and how you actually go about uncovering what happened and how you can fix it and take down Delilah in the end, but this is all just. Concepts. If I were to try to write this as a fic or something I’d have to actually sit down and work out all those details, but for now this is something that’s just been living in my head since like an hour after I finished DH2 for the first time a couple years ago.

(I did warn you it was gonna be long lmao)

#turnabout rambles #mvtk42

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wordywarriorwrites · 4 years

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Chapter 2: Doctor-Patient Privilege

Title: The Good Doctor - In Progress Rating: M | A03 | Master List Summary: When an attempted kidnapping leaves her mysteriously altered, Dr. Anna Riley discovers the world of superheroes is darker and far more perilous than she could have ever imagined. Tasked with hunting down the assailants, Bucky Barnes finds the life he’d left behind has finally caught up with him, and he can’t outrun it anymore. With dark forces at play and danger lurking around every corner, they’ll do whatever it takes to keep each other safe – even if it means crossing the line. Series Warnings: Language, graphic depictions of violence/medical situations, alcohol, explicit sexual content, slow burn.

Cuts, scratches, and bruises from chest to navel. A bandage from armpit to ribcage.

The cherry on top was the split lip and black eye, and while the mirror on the back of the bathroom door showed Anna what she looked like, it couldn’t reveal to her the exact who, what, why, or how of it.

It had been two weeks, and she still couldn’t recall much of anything. Anna relied heavily on her mind, and now, she couldn’t trust it because it was clouded with a combination of panic and confusion and too much pain medication.

The only vivid memory she had of the incident was James. She wasn’t sure why he’d been at her house, but she knew he’d saved her, and she was grateful for it. And though it didn’t make any sense whatsoever, she suddenly felt the need to cover herself up when she thought about him. It could’ve just been frayed nerves and overthinking, but whatever the case, she felt too exposed, and fastened the gown.

Anna knew she wasn’t supposed to be up and walking around on her own just yet, and she wasn’t expected to concern herself with her own patients or work, either. Her only task was to recover and feel better, but she couldn’t because she didn’t know what the hell was actually wrong. Nobody would tell her anything about what happened and any questions she asked were either answered vaguely or not at all. She also felt off somehow; her emotions swung like a pendulum; and she was zip-lining back and forth between fear, outrage, and uncertainty so often, it was making her head hurt.

And the abrupt interruption, the chastisement for being out of bed, and the exceedingly condescending, “How are we feeling today, Dr. Riley?” That just pissed her off even more, and even though Anna knew the nurse was just trying to do her job, she nearly bit the young woman’s head off anyway.

She was asked to calm down. Advised she could be given a sedative to help her relax. Informed she could speak with a counselor if she wished. The thought of grabbing the IV pole and spearing the little bitch with it popped into her head from out of nowhere, but the dark impulse was tempered when Dr. Palmer stepped into the room and asked the nurse to leave.

To her credit, Christine didn’t offer to help her, and she didn’t coddle her, either. She let Anna hobble to the bed all on her own, and once she sat down, Christine pulled up a rolling stool, and took a seat across from her.

“Look, we both know doctors make the worst patients,” she stated. “But I promise, I won’t keep you here any longer than I have to, alright?”

Anna swallowed hard and nodded, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

Christine held up her hand, “It’s okay. Someone hurt you, and you’re on edge. It’s normal and completely understandable.”

“But I – this isn’t normal. And I don’t feel normal.”

“And if you were your own patient? What would you say to that?”

“I’d say give it time. And that there’s no right or wrong way to feel emotionally right after major surgery, let alone after a life-altering, traumatic experience.”

“See, you’re already starting to sound more like yourself,” Christine beamed.

Anna pursed her lips, “I see what you did there, Dr. Palmer.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Dr. Riley,” she quipped as she unfurled the stethoscope from around her neck. “But while I have you here and in a better mood, I’d like to do a quick examination, and check your incision. Would that be alright?”

“Very well,” she sighed. “But only if you let me see my chart.”

The check-up began as soon as Christine handed over the paperwork, and while she poked and prodded, Anna reviewed her test results. Blood, urine, and hair samples; x-rays and CT and PET scans; morphine, anti-inflammatories, and fluids. Everything appeared to be in order, but the one thing that stood out was the toxicology panel. When she commented on the normality of it, Christine said they hadn’t figured out what she’d been drugged with, but they were still running tests.

“Now, can you take off your gown for me?” she asked as she changed her gloves.

Anna did as she requested, and after Christine prepped another sterile bandage, she carefully removed the one taped to her skin. A disconcerted noise, a gentle palpitation, and then, a murmured, ‘what the hell?’

When Christine told her that the wound looked nearly healed, Anna didn’t believe her, and shuffled back to the bathroom to see for herself. When she looked in the mirror, she saw the tissue around the incision wasn’t even inflamed, and the fact that the stitches looked as if they could already be taken out dumbfounded her.

She should’ve had weeks of healing left, but she didn’t. It should’ve hurt like hell when she prodded at it, but it didn’t. It was remarkable and fascinating, but it was also terrifying. She was a normal human being, with normal human being DNA, but this type of rapid healing meant something had been done to her, and both her instincts and experience told her she needed to figure it out before anything else happened.

“I want to see all the tests that were run,” Anna said as she tottered to the bed and rushed to put the offending gown back on. “And I want to see them now.”

Christine nodded and immediately got to her feet, “And I’ll call Dr. Banner and Dr. Strange. Whatever this is, Anna, I promise you – we’ll figure it out.”

As soon as she was alone, Anna grabbed her purse from the closet, and rooted out her cellphone. They’d told her not to use it until they confirmed it wasn’t being tapped or traced, but she disregarded the order.

She wasn’t sure what possessed her, but she turned it on, pulled up James’ contact information, and hit dial. The line went live after one ring, but before she could say anything, he ordered her to take out the battery, and break the SD card.

“I’m on my way,” was the last thing he said, and even though both her professional and personal life practically revolved around her phone, Anna did exactly what he told her to do, and less than five minutes later, James knocked on the door to her room.

“I need to know what you saw,” Anna insisted as she motioned him in. “I need to know what happened. And don’t lie to me.”

He arched an eyebrow, “And what makes you think I would lie to you?”

Anna knew she wasn’t in full possession of her faculties, but she was beginning to feel more than a little neurotic and was tired of being kept in the dark. It was a toxic cocktail of emotions, and that’s what prompted her to squeeze her eyes shut, lift the gown to just below her sternum, and show him the wound.

“It’s almost healed and that shouldn’t be possible,” Anna declared bluntly as she let the fabric fall back into place. “So, are you going to answer my questions, or are you going to feign ignorance like everyone else?”

There was a tense moment of silence before James cleared his throat and told her he had some footage to show her. Something inside of her was screaming that she didn’t need to see it, but she ignored her warring mind, and forced herself to watch it.

Someone had installed a camera in her office without her knowledge or consent, and it had captured every moment of the attack. Anna examined the scene as it unfolded, and when she saw herself take James’ gun and shoot someone in the head, she flinched, and muffled her own startled cry with her hands. She felt like she was going to be sick, but she forced the bile down, and breathed through the nausea.

“I will find out what’s going on,” he stated. “Whatever it takes.”

The no-nonsense, resolute declaration – she believed that.

But it wasn’t until Anna looked into his eyes that she knew she could trust him, too, and that made all the difference.

Chapter 3: Gun in Hand

#bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes smut #bucky barnes fan fiction #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes x ofc #bucky barnes x female character #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes oneshot #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #wordywarriorwrites #the good doctor

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victorious-hypersnakes · 3 years

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“A negative reaction in certain quarters to The Queen’s Gambit was inevitable, given the current political atmosphere. The popular Netflix series, based on the 1983 novel with the same title, ignores identity politics in its portrayal of a young woman’s rise to the top of the chess world.

In the Washington Post, Monica Hesse—who has weighed in foully in the #MeToo witch-hunt—summed up her view in a November 25 headline: “The Queen’s Gambit, a period drama that erases sexism from 1960, is the best fantasy show of the year.” Carina Chocano in the New York Times (“I Want to Live in the Reality of The Queen’s Gambit,” December 2) also asserts that a story “in which a female character succeeds in a man’s world without being harassed, assaulted, abused, ignored, dismissed, sidelined, robbed or forgotten” is a “fantasy.”

Hostile comments from such sources are a form of high praise. More about these reviews later.

One of the aspects of The Queen’s Gambit that makes the series effective is its avoidance of a didactic approach. As we have already noted, it has no simplistic villains or caricatures. The series does not begin with a message to hammer home, but realistically allows some important themes to emerge from the narrative itself.

A self-evident theme is that of young Beth Harmon’s success in a field that is overwhelmingly dominated by chess players who are men. The Queen’ s Gambit, however, does not place the issue of gender front and center. Instead it shows Beth’s emergence, not only as a chess champion, but also, as a rounded and wiser human being.

She struggles with the tremendous psychological trauma that comes with the loss of her family, and the particular circumstances that led to her becoming an orphan. The strict Christian orphanage in which she is placed is no help. While there, however, she meets an older girl, Jolene, as well as the building janitor, Mr. Shaibel. She finds a kind of salvation in chess.

This story, unusual but very authentic, cuts across the current orthodoxy in which every subject is depicted in terms of race and gender. Beth cannot and does not achieve her goal without assistance. Her supporters include men as well as women, Russians as well as Americans, the younger as well as older generations. Jolene, who is African American, is one of Beth’s strongest advocates. In the final episode, when she insists on lending Beth the money to travel to Moscow for the world championship competition, she says, “that’s what family does.”

Then there is Mr. Shaibel, who first introduces Beth, a withdrawn and traumatized nine-year-old, to the game of chess. Again, in the final episode, the bond between the older man and the young girl is movingly expressed after Shaibel’s death, when Beth, who has completely lost touch with him over the years, finds among his belongings at the orphanage a huge batch of newspaper clippings that reveal how he followed every step in her chess career. She breaks down in tears, and later, giving a magazine interview in Moscow, she insists above all that Mr. Shaibel be remembered as the man who first taught and helped her on the road to her future.

Other support for Beth comes from a number of young men who have been chess rivals, and who have come to respect and admire her for her determination and the growing warmth and generosity beneath her sometimes gruff exterior. This also finds expression in the final episode.

One can easily imagine the gnashing of teeth in upper-middle-class circles produced by these portrayals. At the same time, while The Queen’s Gambit goes counter to some of the current trends in popular culture, it immediately struck a chord with audiences and has become the most popular streaming series on Netflix. With 62 million views within its first month, it has been widely commented on, sparked a boom in the sale of chess sets and seen wide social media identification with its protagonist.

It is in this context that the Washington Post and the New York Times have published very similar “appreciations” of The Queen’s Gambit in the last two weeks. Both writers are clearly disturbed by the show, but they disguise their antagonism. Instead, they semi-facetiously choose to reinterpret the story as fantasy—escapist entertainment that has nothing at all to do with the real world.

Hesse in the Washington Post calls the show escapist, since it has “no women in peril” and “no skeezy men.” Though she claims to welcome the escapism, her descriptions betray her actual feelings. Her depiction of Mr. Shaibel is particularly revealing: “Beth meets an odd, reclusive janitor in her orphanage’s basement. An experienced viewer wonders if he’s about to molest her; instead he introduces her to the chessboard.” Later, Hesse continues, one of Beth’s rivals loans her strategy books and another provides her with an air mattress when she stays overnight, rather than assaulting or sexually harassing her.

All this is nothing more than a flight of fancy, according to Hesse. “And it’s at least some of why—even if viewers haven’t put their fingers on it—the show is so dang satisfying. … It’s revisionist history. It would be a wonderful future.”

Chocano’s approach in her New York Times Magazine piece closely resembles Hesse’s. She too expresses astonishment that Mr. Shaibel, “rather than molest her [Beth], teaches her to play chess.” According to Chocano, the circumstances depicted in The Queen’s Gambit are “so vanishingly rare that it comes across as utopian fiction.” This critic says she welcomes it—as long as we understand it as a daydream. This type of “of meritocratic, gender-agnostic fiction is desperately needed. … Nothing could be further from our current reality, but who needs our current reality?”

The claims that the series is appreciated because it is fantasy are disingenuous, to say the least. The show has struck a chord precisely because it is not seen as utopian fiction. The book was not a fantasy novel, and neither is its adaptation for film.

In the eyes of the upper-middle-class #MeToo campaigners, the relations between the sexes simply boil down to warfare. Men are generally rapists and monsters, with a few honorable exceptions. This is not an exaggeration on our part—look at their own words. According to Hesse, “an experienced viewer” would rationally expect that an older man, working as a janitor in an orphanage, would molest a nine-year-old child—in his own workplace, no less! And it is pure fantasy, on the other hand for this “odd” worker—who perhaps has three strikes against him, being white, male and old—to be impressed with the native ability and curiosity of the girl, and to be convinced to show her the game.

What about the claim that The Queen’s Gambit is fantasy because it ignores the problems facing women? This is also false. Beth faces enormous obstacles. She is not uniformly welcomed. She faces curiosity, disbelief and some condescension when she shows up for tournaments. The problem for the Post and Times writers is that the problems Beth faces do not include sexual harassment, which, according to them, must always and everywhere top the list.

There are other ways in which The Queen’s Gambit does not ignore the real world, including the issues facing women in the 1950s and ’60s. Some of Beth’s high school classmates in Lexington, Kentucky are pressured into early motherhood, or jobs that don’t allow for their fuller development. Her adoptive mother Alma must deal with a loveless marriage, a husband who deserts her and general unhappiness that encourages a drinking problem.

Above all, The Queen’s Gambit takes in a wider view of the world, including the working class. The world of Mr. Shaibel or Jolene (who they don’t mention at all) is not one that interests our upper-middle-class critics. Nor do they take note of the Soviet chess players, or of the chess fans, mostly women, who display increasing enthusiasm as Beth exits the tournament after successive victories.

How is it possible to watch this program and not be moved by Beth’s development, especially by the closing episode, when Beth realizes the impact and the heroic character of Mr. Shaibel? This is a real turning point for the young woman, more important than her chess triumphs up to then. And it leads to and is mirrored in the closing scene, when Beth spurns the State Department and its plans to use her fame for the purposes of the Cold War, instead returning to the street to meet and fraternize with her admiring Soviet chess players, most of them past retirement age.

The Post and Times critics note that Beth faces few obstacles, but there is another part of the story that they no doubt find utopian and in a sense dangerous, even if they don’t acknowledge it, and that is the unselfishness of Beth, as well as Jolene and Mr. Shaibel.

How could Shaibel teach a little girl to play chess? How could Jolene give Beth the money to travel to Moscow? How could Beth tell the State Department chaperone she is not interested in a dinner at the White House? This aspect, the rejection of the prevailing ethos of selfishness and wealth accumulation, is bound up with the issue of identity politics, directed as it is not toward the fight for equality and against discrimination, but rather toward personal advancement and power. The upper-middle-class critics instinctively recoil from this theme, and try to ignore it as best they can.

Young people see their experiences and their hopes embodied in the characters on screen. They exhibit a growing and healthy distrust of the claims for gender and racial “diversity” even while the status quo remains firmly entrenched. We repeat, the appearance and reception of The Queen’s Gambit are indeed hopeful signs of things to come.”

...You know every so often, the WSWS spits pure fire.

#the queen's gambit

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scholarhect · 4 years

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2 3 15 babey

HI BRO ILY

2. what’s your taco bell order

crunchwrap supreme. maybe a burrito, idk. i had a bean burrito today but i thought it was gross. plus the red freezy thing (starburst flavored, i think). except today i had baja blast and it was pretty good

i want you to know that this question is the entire reason i made this post. this was the germ, the mustard seed. “ask game: what’s your taco bell order”. and the rest was history

3. tell me about that one thing you wish someone would ask you about

(spoilers for tma if anybody’s gonna listen someday, i guess. literally major spoilers for seasons 1-4. turns out i don’t know how to shut up. thanks for indulging me)

okay. okay i’m gonna talk to you specifically. listen to me, i am talking directly into your ear now. i wish for the opportunity to tell you about ms melanie king. you’ve already heard about her as the inspiration for my haircut and also my fishnet outfit from that time i dragged you to that thrift thing, but she is such an icon. first of all she’s a YOUTUBER. (not like a vlogger, i guess, she hosts a show on youtube. but a youtuber nonetheless.) she hunts GHOSTS. on YOUTUBE. so, she shows up at The Magnus Institute, London, to tell them about that time she saw a ghost (but it was like ... a weird ghost. not a normal ghost. you know). immediately she insults the guy’s shitty old tape recorder that she is expected to speak into, in the year 2016. so they get snippy with each other and end up in a full-blown “The Girls Are Fightinggg” passive aggressive argument because they both view each other as pathetic, fake, not-respectable paranormal investigators. (and they both have A Thing about being respected & taken seriously.) like it turns out that the institute has a fucking laughable reputation in The Academic Community because they’ll just take a statement from anybody about their supposed supernatural experience. meanwhile jon thinks the people on ghost hunt shows are charlatans because their goal is entertainment and, yes, they “do ham it up a bit for the cameras.” ANYWAY. she’s all dragging the magnus institute and he’s like. “but you’re here.” it’s very funny. turns out she can’t tell the Serious Academic Community about her experience because it’s so wild that they’d laugh her out of her career. so she’s here. so she’s got no choice but to tell her story. so the episode continues, and ends, okay, and you’re like, “wow that was a fun and iconic one-off character. right?” WRONG.

season two... she’s BACK baby! after her experience at the military hospital, she wants to do research on War Ghosts, but the magnus institute wouldn’t let her in bc she didn’t have the Academic Clout for it, so the only way is to get an employee to vouch for her. so. she goes to jon like “please you’re the only friend i have here i need help” and they DO fight again but he does agree to help her (because they’re the same person. they are *spiderman pointing meme*). so, later, she’s back. she did some research on War Ghosts and broke into an old train graveyard (which is a thing apparently) and got stabbed by the ghost of an army medic and she got caught and arrested and she was screaming about how She Got Stabbed By A Ghost and somebody took a video and posted it online and then she BECAME A MEME for a couple days and nobody wanted to associate with her anymore. rip. but now she likes jon and she’s here to say goodbye (because she’s going to india) (she also sets off the climax of the season because she just happens to be that one person who can see that the monster pretending to be a major character is not, in fact, that character. she’s like “oh, which sasha? the new one? or the old one?” and jon’s like “what the fuck” and she’s like “there’s definitely two sashas. are you trying to gaslight me.” but whatever)

ok this is literally less than half her arc (i’ve covered. three episodes.) but this is long as fuck so i’ll wrap it up. “what a cool reoccurring character,” you may think! “i hope i get to see more of her!” well GUESS WHAT. she comes back from india (she’s been SHOT BY A GHOST) she wants to talk to jon but he’s not there (he was unfortunately in very close proximity to a murder and he’s on the run so he doesn’t get framed. double traumatic experience, very fun. anyway he’s staying at melanie’s friend’s house, whom she has conveniently namedropped a couple times so far (in the last episode she was like “she actually has nice things to say about you, why didn’t you tell me you knew her” and he’s like “we didn’t part on the best of terms”) because she is his ex-girlfriend, so, though he literally was just pretending that he didn’t know her, he now knows that she doesn’t hate him so he shows up at her place and she hides him from the cops because she’s literally the only person he knows outside work. but this isn’t about him.) so melanie has no job so elias is like “you want a job” and she’s like “sure?” so now she’s an archival assistant at the magnus institute (i realized i had to explain that. i don’t think you even know who elias is. head of the institute, everybody’s secretly evil boss, currently lowkey framing jon for the murder he committed. but lowkey) her coworkers don’t want her there because they’ve realized that their job is evil and they Physically Cannot Quit so they’re like “great now she’s stuck here too” but she doesn’t know that so she’s just like “why does everybody hate me. are you misogynists” because her Disrespect Alarm is going off in her head. and then they have a Department Meeting where jon comes back with an open knife wound on his neck and demands elias tell everyone about the TWO murders and then there’s a standoff situation where somebody wants to shoot elias but he’s “knife cat”ing at her and very dramatically forces her codependent friend slash partner (in the cop way not the gay way) to sign a contract as an archival assistant so that daisy (the cop with the gun) can’t hurt elias because, oh yeah, if he dies supposedly they all do too. so melanie is ... thoroughly disillusioned. and she becomes sullen, too, kind of. and she begins to try to murder elias. queen

things get worse (in a supernatural way. she gets Angry Knife Powers. there’s a Ghost Bullet from India lodged in her leg pumping murderous energy through her body and while she’s asleep jon removes it, it’s all very terrible.) but then she starts going to therapy because she wants to get better and she ends up making the difficult journey to Being Okay. (she also literally blinds herself to escape the institute, and that doesn’t really sound analogous to therapy out of context but it is, okay) and her arc is over and she’s the only character in the story who is currently Okay. we’re proud of her. her last appearance (so far. who knows what s5 has in store. hopefully not much) jon, who is in some deeeeep shit by this point, shows up asking for help, and she’s like “i can’t help you bc i can’t get dragged back into all that, but you’re always welcome in my life as a friend” which is not great for him at that point because he is kind of having a breakdown, but it’s still <3. much better than the beginning part of s4 when she wanted to kill him on sight. also she’s dating jon’s ex now lol

15. if somebody irl you didn’t know asked you how you feel about mcr what would you say (this question isn’t quite asking you how you feel about mcr, but it’s not not asking that)

i’d be like “yeah they’re pretty cool. i like them”

#ask #i am so fucking sorry.#i wrote this at 12-2 am last night. in case that wasnt obvious

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buffyversefanfiction · 4 years

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Tristan Tormented

Warning: I do not own the rights to the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, its spin-off series Angel, its dark horse comics continuation series, or any of the characters created by Joss Whedon and others in the Buffyverse. 15 years +, Mild to Strong Violence, Sexual References. F/F, F/M, M/M, Other +

Volume 8 - Shadow Self (Part Two)

PART ONE HERE

“All that I am saying is I do not see why Spike needs to come especially with Buffy on her way there is such a thing as too many people for a séance.” Angel complained to Faith as the two of them walked through a cemetery located somewhere within New York. “Spike knew Mandi and their friendship believe it or not is a lot less complicated than Tristan and Mandi’s so if it is her haunting Tristan my bet is on Spike convincing her to either lay off or crossover.” Faith explained to the brooding vampire. “Spike is needed for this little séance you and Buffy are here to be there for your kid.” “Is Willow coming too? I mean Buffy goes everywhere with her friends and having a witch during a séance makes sense.” Angel replied to her, giving in to the notion of having to soon play nice with Spike. “I doubt Dawn and Xander are going to be there with the baby and everything…but then again I doubted Spike would be there and hey presto.” “Calm down big guy,” Faith laughed at Angel’s jealousy with Spike. “Willow is not coming I told B it was better for her to come on her own so you and her could you know do whatever parents do with their kids that does not involve messing them up.” “And yet Spike still got an invite?” Angel moaned once more. “I get you and Spike have this beef over B and then there is some messed up shit with Dru that I do not even want to approach but you have both been fighting on the same side for a while now it is long overdue that you two stop being a pair of bitches and learn how to get along.” Faith told him straight. “The last thing Tristan needs right now is dad to be fighting with mum’s on/off lover over stupid shit!” “You are right.” Angel reluctantly admitted. “When did you become the voice of reason?” “I know, scary right?” Faith laughed. “New York’s been a good move for me so far…well until Dru made her little comeback anyways.” “Do you think it is Mandi that is haunting Tristan or something else?” Angel questioned her as the two stopped walking and stood still on the path. “Honestly, I think Mandi is gone and that’s the worst of this because if she is at least haunting him then Tristan has a chance of closure.” Faith replied to Angel. “But then on the sinister side ghosts are known for breaking windows but other than Tristan’s nightmares there has been no other signs of a haunting.” “Well he did not break the windows himself so if this séance is a bust then we take to the research I guess.” Angel answered her, “I hope for Tristan’s sake it is Mandi.” “Never did I think we’d be hoping for a haunting.” Faith said, as the two shared a laugh with each other. “I miss the good old days when it was just vampires and slayers.” Faith was glad Angel was in town despite their awkward attempt at becoming something more the two of them had always made good friends, in a way she was thankful for the fallout they had over a year ago as it led to the two of them finding their unique friendship once again, a friendship Faith valued deeply. Faith had always had a soft side for Angel and it was good to learn he did too but after their brief romance which was just a series of make out sessions she was glad to once again refer to him as a friend having never really been one for relationships, or maybe Faith had just not met someone she could imagine herself being all in for.

With the constant nightmares, the exploding windows and the shock arrival of his father Angel, Tristan Summers was more exhausted than he had ever been before but with the hope of a séance getting to the bottom of his recent ordeal Tristan decided to get some time to himself and ran a bath. Tristan never lasted long lying in the bath he had made for himself before he quickly found himself falling asleep despite trying his hardest to avoid it he couldn’t resist his exhaustion any longer and before long he had found himself fast asleep. As his eyes closed he found himself transported to standing in the garden of his family home in Riverborn, shocked to how he got there and uncertain of whether or not he was dreaming as he looked at his home noticing it looked lived in and abandoned like the last time he was there as he began walking towards the front door only to be left shocked as he reached the porch to find Drusilla opening the front door. “The demon inside you grows stronger by the day my darling boy.” She said as she walked over and gently raised her right hand to stroke Tristan’s right cheek softly. “You have been lost for a long time but soon you will find your real home…with me.” “No, you are wrong this is just some weird way of you messing with my mind again.” Tristan replied as he pulled away from the female vampire. “I will never be with you again unless that is me killing you.” “Silly boy if you wanted me dead you would have tried harder,” Drusilla laughed, revealing what Tristan already knew himself deep down. “Yes, you are mad, but I am the last bit of family you have, and mummy will always love you!” “You killed my friend!” Tristan snapped at her. “You and I both know I was not the only one to kill her.” Drusilla replied, adding more guilt to Tristan’s conscious. Before Tristan could reply to Drusilla he suddenly found himself in a dark cave within a blink of the eye, confused by how he had went from his family home to a cave so quickly as he looked around for any sign of Drusilla only to be met by nothing but empty space and shadows. He wanted to go towards the light and walk out of the cave but something inside him wanted to see where the cave led to and before long Tristan found himself walking further and further into the darkness until he found the first slayer stood in front of him. “You’re the first slayer I remember you from my last wacky dream.” Tristan greeted her. “Why are you here now?” “Be stronger than the monster inside!” Sineya warned Tristan, but before he could respond to her he felt a cold chill behind his shoulder which forced him awake, back in the bathroom of the apartment he shared in the bathroom, back in a now cold bath. “Well that was different,” Tristan stated as he looked around the bathroom. “At least there’s no broken windows this time.” “Hello friend,” A version of Mandi greeted Tristan as she appeared from out of thin air with jet black eyes, shocking Tristan by her presence. “Goodbye friend!” The twisted jet black eyed Mandi grabbed a hold of Tristan’s head and shoved his entire body under water with an unfamiliar superhuman strength as Tristan began struggling to come back up only to be met by Mandi’s cackling as she continued to drown the demonic slayer.

Buffy Summers stood in the alleyway outside of Rogue’s front doors hesitant to walk into the bar owned by her son and her former friend turned enemy turned friend again Faith, as she tried to prepare herself to go into mum mode. Now when it came to monster hunting, she was an expert, being a big sister she managed and she believed she was a good friend but when it came to being a mother she had little practice only having a few weeks with her new born baby before losing him to a portal to the past and she was more than nervous to take up her motherly duties once again. It did not help that her son seemed to be thick as thieves with Faith which added to Buffy’s fears knowing that Tristan could relate more to Faith than her, even Angel had one up on her in the department not to mention nobody exactly asked Buffy to come to L.A. to help Tristan’s redemption, although nobody told her not to either. Suddenly a loud screaming sound came from within the bar that Buffy instantly recognized as her son’s scream forcing her to face her fears and run into the bar as fast as she could, hearing his screams louder when inside the bar which were now matched with sounds of splashing. Buffy quickly jumped over the bar counter and ran into the backroom, rushing towards the stairs which she quickly charged up before reaching the bathroom door and kicking the locked door open with force shocked to see Tristan lying there in the bath looking completely traumatized but his head was now above water and as Buffy looked around the room she concluded he was alone. “Did a ghost try to drown you? They love drowning people, well not just ghosts actually vamps love it too but their a little better at it, especially The Master.” Buffy rambled to Tristan before receiving a non-amused look from her son. “I guess I should close the door and wait downstairs for you to get changed.” She could tell something had just happened that she had just stopped something from going any further but she could also tell her son was wet, naked and in need of getting changed and so she left him to it quickly closing the bathroom door behind her as she left Tristan alone in the bathroom once again. Whatever attacked him was clearly gone and so Buffy felt safe in leaving him to get himself ready before meeting her downstairs, saving him from whatever was tormenting him was an easy task for her, it was just another day as the slayer to her but she knew what would come next, what he needed from her, would prove to be her hardest job yet; being a mum.

After yet another near death experience Tristan had well and truly met his limit, he was done with all things supernatural, with always having to fight every single day and mostly he was done with being haunted by a friend who he believed had every right to torment him like he believed she was. He had spent so much time loving Lucas and then loving Dante that he never stopped to fully appreciate the kind of love he had with his best friend Mandi Jenkins, a girl who always had his back no matter what and even plunged forward into the darkness with him so he did not have to be alone. This loyalty did not go unpunished with Tristan choosing Dante and Drusilla over Mandi repeatedly before going on to kill Mandi’s boyfriend and yet Mandi was one of the biggest advocates for his redemption. The truth is he had given up on her and even himself a long time ago and yet she had never give up on him, her belief in him being what Tristan truly believed had left to her untimely death at the hands of Drusilla. “Why did you have to be such a good friend?” A now fully dressed Tristan mumbled to himself as he looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “You deserved so much better than me!” Tristan continued to investigate his reflection, beginning to notice that his eyes kept changing from it’s normal color to jet black before he started blinking quicker and quicker hoping to see his eyes stay their normal color, growing more and more frustrated, leading him to punch the mirror with his right fist as his face went full vampire mode. “That is who you really are, you can keep trying to pretend you’re not a monster but deep down we both know better.” Dante stated as he appeared from out of thin air, shocking Tristan out of his vamp face, as he struggled to understand how his dead lover was suddenly standing right next to him. “You are not real you cannot be real!” Tristan replied, after managing to stumble up the courage to speak. “If you were going to haunt me you would never have waited so long…” “Oh, I am real I’m just not Dante it’s just easier to talk to you with a face you like.” The being displaying Dante’s body claimed. “You tried drowning me.” Tristan responded, admitting for the first time Mandi was not behind recent events. “You’re a vampire you cannot really drown,” The Dante imposter scoffed. “I just needed to get your attention.” “Why?” Tristan wondered, fearing the answer. “Go downstairs and find out for yourself.” The enigma replied before vanishing how he appeared, within a blink of an eye. It was in that very moment Tristan knew for a fact neither Mandi or any other ghost was haunting him, that Drusilla was right about her claims of the soul he now had being that of the demon’s, the shadow demon’s. He knew that the thing plaguing him was actually himself or rather something within himself and the only way to get rid of this plague was to face the ancient demon within, no matter it’s risk, the risk being the potential of losing his soul forever.

Buffy, Angel and Spike all sat at the counter of the bar on the stools within the Rogue’s bar as Faith stood behind the bar ready to begin a séance she did not fully believed needed to be performed but knew Tristan needed all of their company now more than ever. Buffy had informed them all about her bathroom break in with Tristan, how spooked her son looked by the time she had got to him and how there was no sign of anyone else, not that it would be the first time the slayer had encountered an invisible foe but it was the first time one plagued her son. Faith shared the nightmares she had witnessed Tristan waking up from, how he was convinced Mandi was haunting him and how deeply she feared that the demonic slayer was beginning to lose his mind at the hands of something, if not himself. Angel admitted to his worries about the son he shared with his first love Buffy but also admitted to the hopes that they could pull him through this, being somewhat confident after his recent father/son moment with Tristan. And as for Spike, he didn’t have much to add to the conversation, mostly avoiding the awkwardness of being around Buffy after their latest breakup and the general feuding he had with Angel lasting centuries long, while drinking the bottle of beers Faith had been handing him in order to keep him there. They talked about Tristan over and over while all trying to avoid any other topic of conversation; Faith wanting to avoid the Buffy, Angel and Spike love triangle that never went without it’s drama, Buffy wanting to stop herself admitting her jealousy over Faith’s bond with her son and Angel and Spike just wanting to avoid each other. “He has been up there a really long time!” Faith noticed, keeping the conversation on Tristan still, as she began to grow more worried for the demonic slayer. “Maybe one of us should go up there…” Buffy suggested, fearing being the one to check on her son but also fearing to stay alone with Angel and Spike. “I am more than willing…” Angel began to say, before being cut off. “I’ll go check!” Faith interrupted, not meaning to be rude but just being used to the one handling Tristan, her eagerness not going unnoticed by Buffy. Before long Faith found herself in the backroom of the bar and rushing up the stairs, shouting Tristan’s name repeatedly as she walked into the hallway of their shared apartment before noticing the bathroom door was left opened. She wasted no time into walking into the bathroom, already knowing deep down she wouldn’t find Tristan there only to find the broken mirror as evidence to her theory, concluding Tristan had left to god knows where, fearing if she did not act quick she may never see him again as she worried about what danger lay ahead for the demonic slayer. One thing Faith knew for certain wherever he was going spelled trouble and she was going to need Buffy, Spike and Angel’s best efforts to find Tristan in time and save him from whatever had left him so tormented.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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letterboxd · 4 years

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Ghosted Films: A Director’s Nightmare.

To mark a conversation with Peter Medak about his new documentary The Ghost of Peter Sellers, which details a particularly tumultuous early 1970s film shoot, Dominic Corry looks at how the inherently nightmarish pursuit that is filmmaking has informed other movies.

“Every frame you set up references yourself and your entire life, so bits and pieces indirectly of your life go into every movie.” —Peter Medak

On a certain level, filmmaking is an essentially traumatic experience. The extreme number of moving parts, umpteen tiers of variables—both creative and practical—and the cacophony of egos involved all amount to what in the best-case scenario could generously be considered organized chaos.

And for the most part, it all falls on the director’s shoulders. Although the long-prevailing auteur theory is regularly and healthily challenged these days, our default perception tends to be that whatever happens, good or bad, it’s the director’s fault. Some directors process their filmmaking nightmares by writing a review of the film on Letterboxd. But in the case of journeyman filmmaker Peter Medak (The Changeling, The Krays, Romeo Is Bleeding), he chose to process his filmmaking trauma by… making a film about it.

The Ghost of Peter Sellers revisits the making of the 1974 Peter Sellers-starring pirate comedy Ghost in the Noonday Sun, an infamous folly of a film that has long haunted Medak. It’s also one of those rare films on Letterboxd: at the time of writing it has just two reviews, and only 26 members in a community of two million have noted seeing it. Giving it one and a half stars, EWMasters writes: “Pretty awful. I mean talk about throwing it on the stoop and seeing if the cat’ll lick it up. There is one very good sequence where the crew goes to town on this big plate of fish and vegetables that’s really well done—but otherwise, this is really only worth the time of a Sellers completist”. (Perhaps the main character’s name—Dick Scratcher—should have sounded alarm bells.)

Medak is not the first filmmaker to spin non-fictional gold out of a director’s nightmare (in this case, his own). His movie follows in the footsteps of legendary documentaries such as Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper’s 1991 film Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, which revealed the full extent of the already infamous insanity that comprised the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 classic Apocalypse Now, and used extensive footage shot at the time by Coppola’s filmmaker wife Eleanor (filmmaker spouses are handy to have along for the ride, as Nicolas Winding Refn also knows). And there’s Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s 2002 work Lost in La Mancha, which detailed Terry Gilliam’s (ironically?) Sisyphean efforts to film an adaptation of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.

In both instances, the films in question were (eventually) made—and released to some acclaim (one considerably more than the other)—but as The Ghost of Peter Sellers shows, the shooting of Ghost in the Noonday Sun was such an epic boondoggle that the unfinished film sat unreleased for years and was much later released to no acclaim whatsoever.

The uphill battle to make his never-released horror movie Northwestern made indie filmmaker Mark Borshadt an unlikely filmmaking hero thanks to the breakout success of Chris Smith’s 1999 documentary American Movie. Like with Ghost in the Noonday Sun, the efforts to make a film proved more interesting than the film being made.

Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kevin Bacon in ‘The Big Picture’ (1989).

There are several narrative films of note that have successfully captured the specific pandemonium of filmmaking. Richard Rush’s 1980 cult classic The Stunt Man follows a fugitive who stumbles his way into the titular job on a big chaotic Hollywood production (Peter O’Toole plays the Machiavellian director), while Christopher Guest’s under-appreciated 1989 comedy The Big Picture stars Kevin Bacon as a hot young director who is roughed up by the Hollywood machine. It’s a notable and often overlooked antecedent to The Player, and like the Robert Altman classic, is more about ‘the business’ overall than the specifics of filmmaking, although in both cases Hollywood proves itself analogically appropriate.

Playwright, writer and director David Mamet’s own filmmaking experiences obviously inform his 2000 comedy State and Main, in which a Hollywood production takes over and smothers a small town with its singular thinking. It’s not hard to imagine Mamet processing his own filmmaking trauma in State and Main, just as the Coen brothers famously did in Barton Fink, their ode to writer’s block supposedly inspired by the difficulty they had penning the screenplay for Miller’s Crossing.

Charlie Kaufman channeled his own creative struggles into the screenplay for the 2002 masterpiece Adaptation, then built on those themes with his wildly ambitious 2008 directorial debut Synecdoche, New York, whose more maddening aspects arguably capture the irrational nightmare that is filmmaking better than any film directly ‘about’ filmmaking.

With her 2018 documentary Shirkers, writer Sandi Tan gained some measure of closure regarding an indie film she had starred in and written in her home country of Singapore, in 1992. The documentary (which shares its name with the original movie) has her revisiting the footage from the never-released film, which was stolen (!) 25 years previously by its director—and Tan’s filmmaking mentor—George Cardona.

Back to Peter Medak. In The Ghost of Peter Sellers, which premiered at Telluride Film Festival in 2018 and has just had its virtual screening release, we learn that Hungarian-born Medak was a rising directing star in the early 1970s in London, hot off the Oscar-nominated Peter O’Toole film The Ruling Class. Unable to resist an offer to work with Peter Sellers, then comedy’s reigning superstar—mostly thanks to Blake Edwards’ Pink Panther films—Medak set about shooting a treasure-hunting pirate film on the island nation of Cyprus in the Mediterranean.

In addition to the usual production problems associated with shooting on boats, Medak had to contend with the titanically and infamously fickle Sellers, who quickly turned on him and attempted to get him fired. Sellers also antagonized the other actors, then, after failing to get the production shut down, brought in his friend and longtime creative collaborator Spike Milligan to try and salvage the film, but things kept going wrong, leaving Ghost in the Noonday Sun unfinished and Medak with the blame for the production’s troubles.

Director Peter Medak with Peter Sellers (as Dick Scratcher) and Spike Milligan (as Bill Bombay) on the set of ‘Ghost in the Noonday Sun’, finally released in 1984.

Although Medak’s career recovered, he has clearly been carrying around a lot of hurt associated with the experience, and it’s remarkable watching him work through that on screen by revisiting Cyprus, telling the story of the shoot, and talking to some of the people involved. Sellers (who died in 1980) looms large over the film, but it also has interesting content surrounding the great Spike Milligan, who died in 2002.

Why did you decide to revisit this experience with a documentary? Peter Medak: Because it’s been haunting me for all these years. Because it should’ve been a really very successful film and I was blamed for everything going wrong, when in fact it had nothing to do with me. It was due to Peter’s changing mind and state of mind, and all kinds of things had physically gone wrong on the film. It was always easiest to blame the director for everything and my career at the time was very high up after [The] Ruling Class and this should’ve been the icing on the cake and it wasn’t.

It really bothered me for many years afterwards, even though I went on working. I was asked to do it by the producer of the documentary and I originally said “It’s the last thing I want to do”, because it would mean I would have to go back to Cyprus where I shot the original movie and go on the water, and I never want anything to do with water anymore because a lot of the disasters on the film, production-wise, were all connected with shooting at sea, which is totally impossible to do. Then I thought: well, you know, I should just do it and try to explain what happened on the film. And because some of the explanations were funnier scenes than the original film. So that’s why I did it.

Peter Medak fishing for answers in ‘The Ghost of Peter Sellers’.

In the documentary, you talk about needing to free yourself from the experience by making this film. Do you feel like you achieved that? Well, I think I did because I had a wonderful time doing it. A very sad time at the same time because when you go back to places where you shot 45 years before, it creates a very strange kind of illusion inside your mind, your heart and everything of the time. And having been there then and then being there again, it’s a very strange kind of a supernatural feeling in a way. It felt like you have died and your ghost is actually revisiting all these things you know. I called it The Ghost of Peter Sellers because it sounds good and also because the original film was called Ghost in the Noonday Sun, and this ghostly feeling of mine of revisiting that island after all these years, it’s a very, very strange feeling and somehow the film captures that emotionally.

Do you feel like the large distance from the shoot was necessary to be able to revisit it? It’s not that I thought about it every day of my life, but I talked about it to all the people who I worked with in my following career. When I was doing Romeo Is Bleeding with Gary Oldman, my darling Gary said to me one day, “You know, we are crazy, what we should do is make a movie about your movie, but I don’t want to play Peter Sellers, I want to play you, with your Hungarian, broken-English accent.” We had a script written but we never did it. That was a good 25 years ago.

Peter Medak in front of a promotional poster for ‘Zorro, The Gay Blade’, his 1981 film starring George Hamilton and Lauren Hutton.

So you had considered doing a scripted version of it? Yeah, but I don’t know quite what we would’ve done. I said to Gary at the time: “I never want to go on a boat again”, and so I thought in my mind that the scenes would start each day [with] the characters getting off the pirate ship and they come ashore—that’s where the scenes would begin. I’m sure we would’ve done something quite wonderful, and it would’ve maybe explained the things the [documentary is] trying to explain because I guess that’s what has unconsciously driven me. Because [for the documentary], we didn’t write one word of it, I just completely did it out of instinct. Where I want to shoot, what I want to shoot, and how we should go from here to there. I loved it, so going back on to it was quite easy. It did show me actually what a wonderful medium it is, documentary, because you can do anything with it. It’s a much freer form than scripted movies. Which is rigid. And this is liquid.

Did you have any other documentaries about filmmaking in mind when you went into this? Not really. I knew Terry Gilliam’s Lost in La Mancha, because I love Terry and I love his films and we know each other and knew each other. Terry was very fortunate, because he had so much trouble before on Baron Munchausen, that he decided to have a documentary film crew filming the whole process, so he had the material available, which allowed him to make his film. I said to him after [a screening], “You were lucky because you didn’t make the movie. I had to suffer through 90-something days of shooting with Peter [Sellers].” But of course since then, Terry made the film, and he made something slightly different than what he was originally gonna do.

Peter Medak retraces his steps in ‘The Ghost of Peter Sellers’.

Did any of your subsequent films feel nearly as difficult? Most movies are very difficult to make, and always when you anticipate problems, they never seem to happen. When I did The Changeling, everybody said “George C. Scott is very, very difficult to work with” and he was an absolute angel with me and [it was] the easiest thing to do. It was a wonderful ghost story. I’m very proud of that film. It will live forever. All movies are like your kids, your own children, because you put so much emotion, so much of your soul. That’s what I’m saying to [Ghost in the Noonday Sun executive producer] John Heyman [in The Ghost of Peter Sellers]: the director’s viewpoint is completely different from the producer’s because every frame you set up references yourself and your entire life, so bits and pieces indirectly of your life go into every movie. Because of that it becomes an incredibly personal journey when you put your absolute soul on the line. When it gets criticized or not accepted or whatever, one takes it very personally because the whole thing came from a very personal experience, even though the subject may be nothing to do with you.

Peter Sellers on the set of ‘Ghost in the Noonday Sun’.

Even within the canon of famously difficult performers, Peter Sellers is notorious. How would you describe him to a modern audience? Well he was a genius, there’s no question about it. But he was a manic-depressive person. And it’s a generalization, but most of the great comics are manic-depressive. And he changes his mind all the time. One minute, he loves you, next minute, he hates you. One minute he loves the subject, next minute he doesn’t wanna do it, he wants to get out and all that. So it is very up and down. When you’re running film with a crew of 150 people, and boats on the sea, and weather’s changing and everything, you can’t have that, because you fall behind the schedule and things go wrong.

At one point very early on, all he wanted to do was get off the movie. And then he did everything he [could] to sabotage the film so the film would close down and he wouldn’t have to finish it. But it didn’t just happen on my film, it happened with all his biggest successes, including the Pink Panther movies. Because if you look into Blake Edwards, each one was an absolute nightmare for the director and for the film company, United Artists. And I was gonna include that in the documentary but it had nothing to do with the Ghost in the Noonday Sun so I didn’t. I actually shot some scenes with one of the executives from United Artists at that time who had to deal with the insanity of Peter and also Blake Edwards. I say ‘insanity’; I didn’t want to say it too much in the documentary because I love Peter, even today. And it’s wrong for me to accuse him of those things because it sounds like I’m excusing myself. Peter was crazy. There’s no other way one can describe it. Touched by God. And so was Spike Milligan. But Spike had the love of goodness. Peter had kind of a nasty streak on him when he turned on people.

There’s a moment in the documentary where you suggest that Spike Milligan is more influential than he gets credit for. Do you think he’s under-appreciated? Totally. Totally. Totally. Because his talent was absolutely, monumentally genius. I always say this, but Spike basically created Peter Sellers through [legendary BBC radio programme] The Goon Show. And he also gave him all those various characters and developed those voices for him. It’s all in The Goon Show. The Monty Pythons, they were inspired by The Goon Show and they made it into television. Not story wise, but style wise. That kind of zany, insane humor. Spike was a total genius. Not that Peter wasn’t, but they stood together, completely overwhelmingly wonderfully insane. But Spike was quite something. He was incredibly human, he was incredibly gentle. And incredibly kind. Peter was incredibly combative. And he had that most incredible ego.

But all our lives come from our backgrounds and what our past was and where we come from, and Peter had a very sad upbringing and a very sad life and he was tremendously influenced by his mother. When his mother passed away, he kept on talking to her for ten years. When he came to Cyprus to make the movie, he arrived with big blow-up [photos] of Liza Minnelli—who he’d just broken up with a week before—and his mum. And it sounds terrible when one says it, but psychologically, some of the answers are there. But at the same time, both Peter and Spike, I can’t tell you what a gift it was… I mean the reason I did the film is: who could give up the chance of actually working with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan? It doesn’t matter what the fucking script is, you know? It was a wonderful thing and I would do it all over again tomorrow.