#But of course the secret third option: redemption

[artist-issues]

Yes, true! But I do think that the Human Character Who Refuses to Repent and is Damned is important—and so is the Monster Character Who Never Even Stood Near Redemption. They’re both necessary parts of the story.

One is a cautionary tale. Which is powerful for the audience. The other is a fundamental representation of evil that must be and can be defeated. Which is also powerful for the audience.

she's a 10 but she secretly wants repentance and redemption arcs for all the villains

[firefly-factory]

Kirsi - Suitor Armor Theory (Spoilers?)

Not sure if this counts as a proper theory, but I was talking about Suitor Armor with one of my friends and we were talking about Kirsi and how her story is going to play out.

The biggest question being, of course, is she going to be redeemed, or is she going to continue as Ricon's tragic puppet queen? But then I thought of a secret third option and oh my god. This might be a winner.

Full-blown corruption arc.

Hear me out.

Right now, Kirsi is still under Ricon's influence. However, she's starting to grow in confidence and step into the position of queen in her own right.

(Look at this badass)

I'd been hoping, initially, that this would be the beginning of a redemption arc. Perhaps as she regained agency within her own life, she would gain sympathy for - and AWARENESS of - others whose agency is still quite limited. i.e., the faeries.

But with every passing day, that dream seems farther and farther from being realized. Reimund's murder haunts her, and Ricon's influence only makes it easier to sink into this headspace of anger and vengeance. Even the "tender" moments with "Aurora" are . . . less than ideal. Let's take a look:

But I digress. Since we've taken a look at where Kirsi is right now, let's talk about where she could wind up. This is going more off of vibes than concrete evidence so bear with me.

What if she goes full-on Evil Queen mode? And no, I'm not talking "Ricon controls her and makes her do bad things." Because yeah, he's manipulating her. He's molding her. At this point I think a lot of us are convinced that he's the one who killed Reimund to turn her fully against the faeries. And yes, she is vulnerable.

But she's finding her feet. She's learning what court rules to bend and which to break outright. She is drawing her line in the sand and backing it up with steely resolve. And right now, part of her effectiveness is because of Ricon. But, over weeks or months or heck, perhaps even years, what if she starts to claw her way up to Ricon's level? What if, without him even noticing, she begins to surpass him?

What if evidence of his treachery finally comes to light and she, at the height of her power, is able to destroy him?

But that won't change her stance on the fae. She's been too focused on destroying them for ages now. Even if she, intellectually, knows that the faeries aren't the ones who killed Reimund, in the depths of her mind that's still what she *believes.* And even if the faeries didn't kill him, there's still centuries of bloodshed she can use to justify her beliefs.

And where are Lucia and her faction during all of this? Let's say, to simplify matters, that they've gone north, found the faeries, and Lucia has had a whole training montage where she learns/earns/fights her way into the role of Monarch. (God only knows where Norrix ends up because at this point he would likely be seen as a traitor in one court and a war criminal in the other)

Lucia takes her place as Monarch. Kirsi rules as a vengeful Queen. The war begins again in earnest, and for the first time in a long time it truly is *war.*

The humans have lost many of the advantages provided by Ricon's brutal techniques. The faeries are regaining momentum (and a willingness to engage in direct combat) with their Monarch reinstated. And the bloodshed will be horrific on both sides.

When Kirsi hears mention of the alleged faerie queen in her morning briefs, she is skeptical. Then she is enraged. She never suspects that she could know this shadowy figure, let alone that they were ever friends.

On the other side of the battlefield, even when all signs point to the contrary, Lucia can't believe that Kirsi - her Kirsi - is the one doing all of this. She must be under someone's control, she must be confused. It never occurs to Lucia that she might be doing this entirely of her own volition.

As it has been for a long time - since the very beginning - their view of each other is warped by the things they never confessed. And because of this, at the very end, they are enemies

[thekingofthenameless]

Is Arthur a character in TKN, and if he is, what kind of role does he play? I know Uther is the Villain King of the story, and I was curious on how you planned to portray Arthur, if at all? 👀

Thanks for the ask! :D

For reference, this is Uther’s appearance in TKN!

He may look cool, but trust me, he’s not a good person at all.

He’s charming (superficially), lacking empathy and a sense of guilt, a pathological liar, inclined to psychologically manipulate, bold, impulsive, narcissistic, arrogant, inclined to violence…

The list goes on, and it’s because he’s a psychopath. The word is overused and misused, but I mean it in the (current) true definition. It can be caused by “genetic and environmental issues, such as neglect or abuse by parental figures”, from Wikipedia’s article covering it.

A few risk factors are also “family history, parental neglect, abuse, or psychological manipulation of the affected child”. And depending on how I characterize his father, Constantine (The Third possibly, but idk lol), he could’ve been a sweetheart who was abused into becoming a monster, or he was the monster all along.

Either way, he destroys everyone around him, intentionally or not. He harbors secret hate towards Merlin and Charlie, because neither of them are like him at all, besides both being blatantly magic.

Realizing there’s so much I haven’t thought about…

Back in Daylight’s Redemption: Emerald Embers, Merlin had been living at Camelot for 100 years when the story started (separated from Charlie at that point; I’ll say more about that in a different post). The order of the kings I had was Vortigern, Constantine, Uther, and Arthur. Vortigern is the only one who isn’t explicitly related to them, but he was who I was going with.

The order of the kings still makes sense to me? But I don’t know how long Merlin and Charlie would’ve been living at Camelot before “present day”. T_T

Anyways, Uther is a sun coded character, like Merlin is subtly moon coded with his earrings!

Camelot has the sun as its insignia, making Merlin’s moon motifs seem like he’s rebelling against the royals’ authority. (He is. Secretly.)

Merlin actually had moon motifs back in Daylight's Redemption, to match Morgana! But when I started The King of the Nameless, I wasn't sure who the brutal sun character would be for a while, since at the "beginning" of the story, Morgana isn't even alive yet. And of course, she isn't the Morgana from Tales of Arcadia. (I'll talk more about her later.) Ignore the tag for Morgana lol; that's for ToA's version, not mine.

Finaly had a stroke of genius and decided it would be Uther! That was before he'd been designed lol, so now that he was going to have that coding, I wanted to finally give him one.

It was... difficult. He was being a bitch to design along with just. being a bitch in general. Forgot he was supposed to be 25, so I kept making dudes in their 40s in the game Dragon's Dogma, and I also couldn't decide if I wanted him to be handsome or ugly. To past me, “the first option would show that evil people can be handsome too, but I don't still don’t want people simping for him. The second option might make it unintentionally seem like 'Oh of course he’s evil! He’s ugly!’”

Made a poll asking if I should make him handsome or ugly, and handsome won! After that, I think I finally gave up and commissioned Merlin's first artist, using some references at the bottom of the post.

That's how his design finally came to be!

Then after that, his backstory that I really need to update at some point went through multiple revisions.

Idea 1: Listened to “Monster” from Epic the Musical and thought of him not always being evil until his father died; (magically related, presumably) he saw his brother, Aurelius, who was the older brother and king at this point in time, struggling under the weight of the crown and blamed it on magic doing this. Then as he grew up with Merlin as one his mentors, he realized that Merlin was insane (read: mentally ill) and felt like he was losing him, and presumed his magic did it to him.

His brother died, and his feelings towards magic taking everything from him only increased. Logical solution is, of course, eradicating magic completely so no one else would get hurt because of it (and starting with murdering Merlin). I had no idea how that would fit in with Igraine.

I didn't want to retcon Uther’s character, but I also thought a kind character becoming a monster was peak. I had no idea who a different character could be though.

Idea 2: Constantine sucked ass and Merlin basically raised Uther, but the latter's biological father still managed to get into Uther’s head that Merlin was crazy. That cued the complicated feelings of not wanting the one who raised him to die, while also thinking he needed to be put out of his misery so he wouldn't suffer anymore, and the misguided offspring betrayal. Seemed like a tragic villain at this point, and once again couldn't figure out how to make Igraine fit. He also started planning the magical genocide behind Merlin’s back because he knew that Merlin would never agree, and his reasoning was that magic took his father and brother, and he wouldn’t let that happen to anyone else.

Idea 3: Make Aurelius the asshole brother to fit the previous two ideas. Or Uther was still an asshole and he was dead. Or he faked his death or something.

@danhengsbestie and I got mixed up while talking about the third idea, and she thought I meant make Uther good and Aurelius evil, but I meant keep Uther evil and Aurelius good. She liked his design and though he could be a good guy, and that I could give him a more heroic treatment. I disagreed because if you know what he did to Igraine (and Gorlois afterwards) in the Legends, then you know.

Made another poll. Uther won, so that's what I kept.

If anyone wants to hear more about Uther, and Igraine, Gorlois, and that whole situation, send me an ask? 👀 There's some dark things there so I'd put it in a separate post so people can avoid it if they need to. Also this is getting a bit long even without their designs and things...

Ending Uther's bit with this: something funny about Charlie’s personality changing is that at one point Uther hated him for “being like him (and he doesn’t realize it)” but now their personalities are vastly different lol.

Compared to Uther’s above traits, Charlie’s serious, brave, protective (of Merlin), compassionate (towards Merlin), as well as fierce but loving and loyal, who sometimes takes a little bit longer to care about people than Merlin due to personality differences. He'll readily state his opinions and start arguments without caring, as well as having no qualms about staring people down while gauging their personality and threat level. Was at first completely normal but is now Fucked Up too.

Arthur:

I... have no official design for this dude yet. But like in many of the Legends, he's the son of Uther and Igraine! He's also the older sister of Morgana.

These are just a few of his portrayals in media, in order: King Arthur by Charles Ernest Butler, N. C. Wyeth's title page illustration for The Boy's King Arthur (1922), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Quest for Camelot, Once Upon A Time, Merlin (2008), and Tales of Arcadia.

These are a couple of beta designs I made before I realized I wanted him to look younger, like his father, and these are also from before Uther got designed lol.

I also made a couple of Picrews for him, but now when I look at them I'm like: "Why are you white."

Because this is the color swatch I picked directly from Morgana's skin, and while her original artist said she could be any race or gender I wanted since she was designed to be ambigious, I went with her being Greek after @honeyxmonkey suggested it!

Decided to attempt another design for him while making this post, and I'm not set on it, but for now this is him lol.

I think he looks like Krel from Tales of Arcadia. 💀

Anyways, onto his portrayal!

Or former portrayal. Apparently most of this is not updated information. I'm so sorry to disappoint lol.

Some of this is a combination of Daylight’s Redemption and TKN content.

DR, January: I was thinking about Arthur struggling with trusting his magic his whole life because of Uther’s upbringing, in spite of Merlin and Morgana proving that magic can be good instead of doing an abrupt 180 as soon as Guinevere dies. Because most fics either have him hating magic the whole fic regardless of logical timelines, or have the 180, but I was thinking the struggle would be interesting because it contrasted Gwen, who’s loved magic her whole life and he loves her, Merlin, and Morgana enough to keep trying to fight his father’s opinions drilled into.

Then it’s all thrown down the drain when Bellroc stabs him and the Order makes him the Green Knight.

And Gwen dying also pushed him over the edge of after all his trying and launching the genocide out of grief despite Merlin and Morgana’s pleas.

TKN, January: Despite me starting to change the newly titled writing into a book, Guinevere was still dead due to magical means, and Arthur still started the genocide out of grief.

February: I realized Merlin being more open with his emotions meant he actually told people about his visions, which made it even more gutwrenching when Merlin told Arthur about his vision of the latter committing the magical genocide, and he was so grief stricken he did it anyways because he felt like Uther was right about everything he taught him despite him being dead for years at this point.

March: He was going to be one of four of Merlin’s adopted kids: him, Guinevere, Morgana, and Mordred. Which is very weird compared to now, where Merlin only has Charlie as his adopted kid lol. I’ll elaborate more on him and Charlie in an ask @gaylightisminetocommand sent!

Arthur was adopted first because Uther was severely lacking as a father figure (to say the least). Guinevere came to Camelot every summer to hopefully become friends with Arthur because the two were betrothed (Swan Princess, anyone?). And they did bond pretty much immediately! Morgana was adopted because at that point, she also lived in Camelot, and Uther was just as amazing with her. Same with Mordred.

Currently: Something that will stay the same from my most recent version is Arthur being nicer than some portrayals, such as Once Upon A Time, where, according to the casting call, is “a good and just ruler who, beneath the surface, is a master manipulator who can carry a grudge to the grave, and maybe beyond. He harbors an eternal burning love for Guinevere that can lean toward being a bit... controlling.”, or Tales of Arcadia, where he enacts a magical genocide after Guinevere dies. (Back then, this was because of Merlin’s influence, but if that stays the same Merlin will be more of a mentor figure than a parental one.)

Also, Mordred is still going to be related to him, but he isn’t his son like the Legends. Especially not through his mother being Morgana (or Morgause depending on the version). They’re both Arthur’s half-sisters, and there won’t be any incest in TKN at all. Mordred also won’t bring around the end of Camelot lol. I think.

Also also, he’s a great older brother to Morgana, and he and Guinevere actually have a wholesome marriage! He never has any lovers besides her, and they rule Camelot as equals.

To apologize for the lack of information, I’m also going to yap about Guinevere and Morgana!

Guinevere:

I actually have more of a set design for her!

I could've SWORN she's usually blonde at first, so I made that design first, but most images I found depict her with brown hair. So now… I can’t decide if I like blonde or brunette better. 😭

Back in January, when I was first coming up with new ideas, I thought of Morgana being a teenager instead of a grown woman like usual, and at this point, she was the child produced by ahem. The if you know thing. Her being so much younger when Uther died and being the result of the Uther thing™️ instead of Arthur caused her a lot of insecurity, but Guinevere didn’t care about the circumstances of her birth because it wasn’t her fault, and basically became an older sister to her. When she died, Morgana was shattered.

Debated on if I was going to keep her dead or not as I went through more revisions, and finally decided not to :] She’s gonna live!!!

Back when Merlin had four kids, I was debating on if he possibly would have three instead, since her just coming every summer might not be enough for him to be a dad to her. At the very least, they’d have been friends.

In her current version, she still loves Morgana, and she’s an older sister figure to her like before. And a line in God Games from Epic: the Musical applies to her: “Never once has he cheated on his wife”. The Lancelot affair destroying the round table doesn’t occur, and we love a loyal queen!

Morgana:

Like Merlin, she’s gone through a few design changes.

This was her first design! And I still think she looks cute :) It’s very different from her current one though lol.

This was way back when I first started TKN! I was thinking of inverting Arthur and Morgana’s usual designs, and making him have black hair, and her have blonde hair.

I’ll go through her ton of backstory changes like Merlin and Charlie first and reveal her design at the end!

As I said, originally, she was Uther’s daughter produced by that, a bastard child because Uther wasn’t married to her mother. He hated her because of it, even though it was the consequences of his own actions.

In the og Arthurian Legends, the result was Arthur, but I forgot which sibling it was, so I had to Google it, and I also wanted Morgana angst. Uther also treated her like shit for having magic; she was eight when it first started.

He only let Merlin train her in magic so she wouldn’t become a monster, but unbeknownst to them, he was secretly sending assassins in attempts to rid himself of her (and he might have done it to Merlin too).

Also I wasn’t very smart lol, because then I couldn’t decide if she or Arthur was going to be Igraine’s child but… in Arthurian Legends they’re both her kids. I thought they were half-siblings through Uther, not her. That’s part of why Morgana was the bastard child first, but then I couldn’t decide which one it was going to be, and apparently. I didn’t have to and I’m just stupid.

Like how I forgot Arthur was the original child by Uther in the Legends. 😭 But in my defense, I may have been thinking of BBC Merlin where they were actually half-siblings through Uther.

After my realization, I was thinking about how Merlin would become Morgana’s surrogate father because of her being Igraine and Gorlois’ daughter, and Uther wouldn’t have any claim to take her to Camelot that way; so maybe they would actually die of old age later on, and then she was taken to Camelot. (Uther was possibly still alive because he was forcing Merlin to keep him immortal. Idk. Or Arthur and Gwen were ruling Camelot by then and he wantsd to take in the half-sister he’s never met.) So anyways, she latched onto Merlin because he was nice just like her parents were, and he was magic just like her, and as much as her parents had loved her, they had never known what it was to be magic in a world that hated you.

But then @danhengsbestie said killing them off was rude lol.

Then I thought that maybe actually she could start coming to Camelot every summer or something so Merlin could teach her magic. And then she has three parents.

When Guinevere dies, she and Arthur were both heartbroken, and her grief got even worse when Arthur launched the genocide against magical beings despite her and Merlin’s pleas.

She couldn’t take being in the castle after Gwen’s funeral, and she goes out to the forest, where my equivalent of the Arcane Order at this point found her.

“Nari” sensed her soul and how much pain she was in, and they decide that her grief and young age makes her a prime target for them.

They easily manipulate her into being their pawn, and the “fight” between Merlin and her was him getting her to stand down after he tells her who they truly are.

But no one else was taking her unintentional betrayal well…

Well, that was wild. It’s gonna get even worse with Merlin and Charlie’s post lollll.

Another idea I had was Morgana getting a prosthetic arm later, like how ToA Morgana got the prosthetic hand.

And a day later, I found an adoptable that I decided was perfect! I was so glad they (designed to be an ambiguous gender as well as race lol) were still available, because I would’ve been crushed. 😭 I couldn’t believe nobody had snagged them.

They didn’t have a name either when I got them lol, but I saw them and I was like “Ohh that’s beautiful!! WAIT THAT WOULD BE A PERFECT MORGANA DESIGN”

I thought it was hilarious that I had the idea for her to have a prosthetic arm and then not even a day later bam. art.

I still have to figure out how she loses her arm and part of her left ear, along with getting the scars on her face.

The one thing that’s stayed consistent about her is being a lesbian! :D Like ToA’s is.

Back when Uther was still her stepfather, I had an idea for him being so despicable that he yelled at Morgana after she lost her arm for being that “careless” when she’d just woken up at Camelot after passing out from the blood loss and being bandaged up. Yeah that definitely won’t happen now.

I wasn’t actually going to make her Greek at first, but when I was making a reference sheet for her, her skin color came out as various shades of brown when I used a color picker tool. Before, I thought she was white because of the lighting. I thought it was my mistake, so I asked her original artist if he had a possible race for her, and he said I could decide.

Like I said, @honeyxmonkey suggested her being Greek after saying she looked vaguely Latina lol, and I ran with it! I also made a few Picrews of her during the figuring out her race part, and you can see how she changed! The third one is actually still a little bit lighter than her color swatch lol.

Oh also, she gets a familiar eventually! :D Her name is Willa!

Since Charlie is one of the biggest animal familiars currently existing, she’ll definitely be smaller than him, but other than that I don’t have a current size for her lol.

Artist credits: Soberana Art (on Artstation) MuriWorks (on DeviantArt), inn13art (on DeviantArt)

Picrew credits: brightgoat, romanapologist/hotvanilla, baydews

Links to their individual posts, if applicable: Uther reveal, Original Uther concepts, Uther design poll, Uther moral alignment poll, Original character, (1, 2,) Young Arthas Menethil, 3rd Uther reference), King Arthur, N. C. Wyeth's illustration, The Sword in the Stone Arthur, The Quest for Camelot Arthur, Once Upon A Time Arthur, BBC Arthur, ToA Arthur, ADOPTABLE - Machine Amongst the Flowers (on DeviantArt) Willa (on DeviantArt). (also a few more links throughout the post lol)

Taglist: @gaylightisminetocommand, @the-arson-author-gamer, @honeyxmonkey, @danhengsbestie, @falki-of-the-vanir

[skamenglishsubs]

Young Royals, Season 3, Give me what I want!

Hopefully wWe're gonna get a third season FUCK YEAH GUYS WOOHOO, and since my predictions for last season were so awesome, here's my predictions for the next one, combined with my personal wishlist:

First up, what I don't want is Wilhelm and Simon having relationship issues. We're done with that, thank you very much. Let them be together the entire season, no reason to force them apart again. Will they/won't they? They will. Move on.

Time-wise, it makes perfect sense for the season to span the rest of the spring semester, culminating in graduation for the third-year students. Or, it could continue into the summer break, although that would remove us from the school setting. Maybe for something epilogue-ish?

Obviously, the show has to deal with the two main drama points that were setup; The fallout from Wilhelm coming out publicly, and the fallout from Sara reporting August to the police.

Wilhelm coming out is fodder for lots of drama, how will the Queen and the court react, how will the press react, how will the people react? I expect paparazzi, newspaper headlines, and more shouting matches over the phone.

If it becomes public knowledge that August leaked the sex tape, that's gonna have repercussions for him at school, and it throws a wrench in the court's plan to make him Wilhelm's backup. Aside from the possible criminal investigation and possible trial, of course. Maybe there's some redemption possible for him here? I wouldn't mind.

Simon is now going to start feeling the weight of royal duty and being in the public eye. Maybe he'll need to move to Hillerska for his own protection and become a boarder. Is he joining Forest Ridge? Can he maybe join a rival house like Sprucewood? That could be some fun drama. But the royal court is also going to want to plan his future, just like Wilhelm's is already planned, I want to see him deal with all those expectations. He might also find out that having a relationship in secret was the easier option.

And what about Rosh and Ayub? There's an excellent opportunity for some class journey drama here, is Simon going to leave them behind? Is he going to be forced to leave them behind? If he's still living at home, is he going to need a bodyguard when riding the bus from school with his friends? Who would win in a fight, Malin or Rosh?

I missed Linda and Micke in season 2. I know there's good reasons for it, but I want more of them in season 3. Both of them are going to be thrust into the public eye having to deal with that, and Micke isn't exactly clean-cut and representative. He might also be dragged into the drug circus because of August, so that's some excellent drama fuel right there.

I don't know what I wish for Sara. Can the show give her a little break perhaps, and not let her be that trigger for lots of drama, please? She deserves some peace and quiet. It would also be kinda funny if she and Simon trade places so that she'll move back home again, while Simon moves to Hillerska. Maybe have her realize how misguided her class aspirations have been?

I want Felice to have more of a plot of her own. She's only been on support duty in season 2, I want her plot from season 1 to come back, let's do something with her parents, her mom is wonderfully terrible!

Simon and Wilhelm have never really been publicly a couple at Hillerska. Everyone knows, sure, but it's always been gossipy and talked about behind their backs. How will everyone deal with it being out in the open? How will this clash with various shitty traditions at Forest Ridge like the on-the-table crap? Are they gonna make both boys get up and confess? That could actually be done in a good, affirming way. I would also love for the school to close ranks and protect the boys from outside prying eyes like paparazzi and shit. That could be an opportunity for the minor characters to shine. And what about the Society? Wilhelm is technically breaking the oath he made when he joined. Will they break or bend?

Alexander needs justice, just get out from under August's thumb, please! Henry can stick to comic relief, he's great at it. Have him interrupt the boys getting busy for once! Stedrika becoming an official item? Not sure if I want it, but maybe? Walter? Madison? Nils?Just keep carrying on, they're great as they are.

But the thing I want most is more Vincent. He is the worst, and I love every second of it. More. Give me more! Be terrible and hilarious all at once!

Finally, can we get some more cute shit with our main couple? I want Simon to sleep over at the castle. Can they wake up together in that big bed of Wilhelm's, please? And let's do a "meet the parents" while we're there. Have Simon join a private family dinner with the royals!

Now give me what I want! 🥰

[crabs-brencil]

this isn't really a *take* per se, but i feel like both the game and the fandom never/rarely actually addresses amanda, either as a character or a plot device. like ok this is going to be unstructured rambling but like. so she's very much characterised as like, an abuser acting of her own volition, right, but that's it? like the game never really goes beyond that, like, why did they (cyberlife) decide that the best course of action for how they wanted to manage and monitor their spy/detective was through a like. 'emotionally abusive parent that bases all of their positive perception of you on your achievements' type relationship?? why make connor receptive to it?? cause they sure as shit didn't *need* to do that. but then it's like, what if they *did* need to do that? like what if that was somehow related to keeping connor from deviating? because like, as a kid who grew up like that, even though i knew that i hated being treated that way i still conformed with it? like im ngl idrk why or how it worked, just that it did. and i feel like that could bring up some really interesting aspects of deviancy?? idk

going back to amanda though, im not really talking about an amanda redemption arc or anything, cause frankly i kinda really love her character as she already is****, but like i just wish the game like explored it more. like, is she even acting on her own volition?? cause ive seen some fandom stuff in which she deviates and that's always cool. but then that raises the question of a) if amanda is capable of deviating, why doesn't she? she experiences the same shit connor does, so does she have extra code or conditioning that prevents her? and b) if amanda isn't capable of deviating, then like cyberlife has solved the deviancy crisis?? actually, in either case cyberlife has solved the deviancy crisis.

also, secret third option c) if she's already a deviant and just. continues to do abuse? ive not seen that ever done before but like id be so interested in a justification for that.

****not saying that emotionally abusing ppl is admirable or anything of the sort

anyways that's a whole-ass essay so i'll stop here lmao

Hey, dbh fandom, what are the most unpopular takes that you have that no one (or almost no one) else seems to share/talk about?

(About the game, not the fandom. Do not turn it into a place to say how much you hate someone in the fandom spaces, that's not what I'm asking about)

[masterweaverx]

I’ve decided that the main characters of "My Next Life As A Villainess” can have D&D classes! So here we go. Big thanks to 5Etools for helping me out with this!

Katarina Claes: Kalashtar Redemption Paladin. Nobody said holy warriors had to be smart!

In all seriousness, Paladins of 5E are charisma-based “Half-casters,” which means they mix melee with magic. And it’s easy enough to reflavor a lot of D&D spells as “Oh, yeah, this character just happens to know X random thing or can talk so convincingly!” (Or the character doesn’t realize they’re doing magic, which would be so Katarina.) Plus the Redemption oath just fits so well for the girl, both thematically and mechanically. Throw on Strength-based combat skills because of years of farming and sword-training... it’s pretty obvious.

As to the race choice, the Kalashtar are a third-party Eberron race that are described as being “a fusion of humans and beings from the realm of dreams.” Which hey, what else would you call somebody who remembered their past life? And from a mechanical perspective, it would give Katarina resistance to psychic damage (she’s that dense) and automatic advantage on persuasion rolls (she can say just the right thing).

Maria Campbell: Variant Human Life Cleric. A “Well Duh!” if I ever saw one.

Clerics, the traditional healers and support characters in all of roleplaying, are wisdom-based casters in 5E. I was originally considering making Maria a Light cleric but, mechanically, Life clerics are closer to Light magic as portrayed in the series so, yeah, Life.

Variant Humans are the “Pick an ability increase and get a free feat at the start of the game” race, and Maria is sorta kinda the protagonist of the old game? Her player would probably just set herself up to fill in the gaps of the other characters anyway. So yeah.

Mary Hunt: Kaladesh Elf Samurai Fighter. Look, she can be scary, alright?

Fighters can be strength-based OR dexterity-based, and Mary would have a lot of dexterity skill from all the gardening and stuff. A lot of the Fighter perks are basically “No I’m NOT giving up!” which, yeah, fits her well. Being a Samurai not only enhances that, but it gives her perks for certain wisdom traits--Mary is not an idiot by any stretch of the imagination.

Kaladesh elves synch pretty well with this build, giving both Dexterity and Wisdom boosts, but primarily I picked this particular race for the free Druid cantrip in order to represent Mary’s water magic. Still, she would be one to choose to meditate instead of falling asleep, just to keep an eye on... things.

Sophia Ascart: Detection Mark Half-Elf Divination Wizard. She likes them books.

The class side of this was easy. Intelligence-based caster? Wizard. Love of books? Wizard. Not a physical fighter? Wizard. Had a talk with her past self? Divination wizard. What can I say, Sophia is pretty good at being a wizkid.

Race, though... oh, wow. So many options. I went with a Detection Mark Half-Elf because Sophia really, really notices things and that seems to be what that particular race was built for. Plus it’s an Eberron thing, like Katarina’s race, so that’s a past life connection! Yay!

Nicol Ascart: Storm Mark Half-Elf Swashbuckler Rogue. That smile works wonders.

Com on, how couldn’t I make Nicol ‘incapacitates a crowd with a smile’ Ascart a swashbuckler? Plus Rogues are usually known for being the skill class of 5E, doing things handling things that come up in adventures beyond punching monsters. Nicol does seem the most... level-headed of the group, so he would probably be the one to handle the little details.

As for race, I’ll admit I went with the ‘Sophia’s a half-elf so Nicol’s also a half-elf!’ route. But Storm Mark Half-Elves do come with a lot of wind-based magic, which not only fits canon but also enhances what Nicol could do as a rogue. Admittedly he would have to multiclass slightly to get at most of it, but hey, Gust is a cantrip and the other spells are there for him if he ever does.

Keith Claes: Fierna Tiefling Monster Slayer Ranger. Friendly, but dangerous.

Rangers are another half-caster class, and one with many ‘summon allies’ sort of spells. Sure, they’re technically animals instead of earth elementals, but I do subscribe to the ‘reflavor is fine!’ school of thought so Keith can have his dolls come out when he casts Conjure Animals. The Monster Slayer subclass is built around countering and containing dangerous beings... like, say, Keith himself? Oh, wow, I just picked it because it looked cool. Huh.

And why is Keith a Tiefling? In another life, he was a playboy, so of COURSE he’s going to get a charisma-boost race! A resistance to fire damage makes him perfect for, ah, interrupting a certain prince’s advances. And Fierna Tieflings get spells based around convincing people of things, like Friends and Charm Person, and there’s a certain dense girl in Keith’s life that needs a little guidance.

Geordo Stuart: Gold Standard Dragonborn Draconic Sorcerer. BURN BABY BURN!

Sorcerers are one of the charisma-based casters, with the idea that they have magic IN THEIR BLOOOOOD so they can, you know, cast without needing to do all that silly Study business. Plus they get some of their subclass stuff right off the bat, and Draconic Sorcerers get extra hitpoints every level. Geordo may not use his magic often, but it’s implied that as a royal his magic is redonkulously powerful, so this? This was basically set in stone.

And why did I make the prince a dragonborn? Why, because DRAGONS ARE AWESOME. Look, I don’t make the rules. More seriously, basic dragonborn have a charisma boost, strength boost, and a breath weapon. Admittedly this would probably make Geordo look a LOT different, but what the hey.

Alan Stuart: Silver Draconblood Dragonborn Lore Bard. He knows things so you don’t have to.

Bards are the other charisma-based casters, and a lot more support-based then sorcerers. Plus they’re good musicians, which fits Alan to a T! Lore Bards lean heavily into the ‘Jack Of All Trades’ mindset, with bonus proficiencies and extra magic secrets, because there was that competitive ‘I will best you some way!’ streak early on and that did lean into ‘I’ll learn all I can’ later in his life.

As to why he’s a draconblood dragonborn instead of a standard dragonborn? Draconbloods get an intelligence boost instead of a strength boost, and also get the trait Forceful Presence instead of Damage Resistance. He might not be able to do as much damage as his twin, but Alan is really good at getting attention and using it.

Anne Shelly: Standard Human Open Hand Monk. Somebody has to clean up after these kids!

Monks excel not just in unarmed combat, but in unarmed ‘getting places nobody thinks about’ as well as ‘keeping a cool head when everything goes nuts.’ And the Open Hand Monk doubles down on that, throwing in the ability to basically say “Stop That” whenever needed. This is perfect for Anne “My Mistress Is The Source Of All Chaos” Shelly, wouldn’t you say?

And yeah, she’s a Standard Human. In 5E Standard humans don’t get any special traits, but they do get +1 to every one of their abilities. That’s a small but significant boost to all rolls and a number of stats. Don’t underestimate Anne; she may be in the background, but she’s in the background of Madness and it takes a lot to survive that.

Rafael Walt: Fallen Aasimar Great Old One Warlock. Retired Edgelord.

Warlocks are, ah, not the easiest class to play. They’ve got a lot of special mechanics about their spells, having fewer slots but easier time restoring them. But they do also get a few free invocations, and their patrons can let them spread into different specializations. Rafael knows how to use his magic to the best he can, and... well, the Great Old One patron features just fit what he can do very well.

Aasimar have charisma boosts and darkness resistance universally, but Fallen Aasimar also come with a transformation into a terrifying shadow warrior. Look, Rafael's been through a lot, I’ll grant you. He probably deserves a break. But both thematically and mechanically, this just fits.

===

So that’s that! For now, anyway! Thoughts and opinions are always welcome.

[gameofdrarry]

Drarropoly 2020 Team Activity 2: Helga’s Thimble

Drarropoly is now in full swing, and our players are writing their hearts out as they make their ways around our Drarry-themed monopoly board. Each space has a prompt with different levels, each with different requirements, and players can earn points in a variety of ways. They can write or create art for these prompts, commenting and reccing gets points, and new this year, podficcers are welcome in Drarropoly!

Players are sorted and assigned at random to four different teams. All team activities and discussions are completely optional but can yield extra points to help win the game! These creative team activities are where players can imagine new, fun headcanons in the Harry Potter universe and perhaps a few stories of their own!

Team Activity 2: Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me The Discovering of the Discoveries

The leaders of the Hogwarts Unified Mavens of Protection (also known by their acronym, H.U.M.P.) are pleased to announce that our research teams have released their information as to how they obtained their newly discovered artifacts. Each team was kind enough to provide images depicting the locations of each relic as well, along with a short description of the when where and how of discovering it came about!

For those that would also like to join one of our Relic Investigation and Observation Teams (or R.I.O.T.s,) please check the links below before any irritable owls decide to eat this part of the report.

Signups are from Nov 1 - Jan 22, follow this link to sign up! Still have questions? Follow this link to read our full rules and FAQ!

Team Activity 1

CODENAME: Helga’s Thimble

An Investigatory Report

R.I.O.T Aurors involved in this mission:

Ladderofyears

glittering_git

andithiel

KristinaBird

EvAEleanor

mooshisooshi

GinevraHolmes

Ari

chxrlieweaslxy

Background: The Legend of Helga’s Thimble:

As written by Auror KristinaBird.

When Hogwarts was being founded and the castle was being prepared for students, Helga Hufflepuff was working to make the castle not just a place of learning, but a home for all the students that would inhabit it.

Most people know that she built the greenhouses, and landscaped the grounds, but many don’t know that she worked her fingers to the bone creating bed linens, and curtains in the colours each of her fellow founders wanted for their students' common rooms. But her favourite after hours project was to create tapestries of everything from woodland scenes to famous witches and wizards. Castle walls can be cold and she wanted more than anything for the halls of her school to feel warm and inviting.

One day Salazar noticed at a meeting of the founders as they reported their various duties and accomplishments for their school opening that Helga’s fingers were often raw and pricked from all her tireless work. So he set himself to a task, and made her a thimble. One that would not only protect her as she created, but once worn would cure and heal all wounds. At least that’s what he told her it did.

He didn’t tell her that he also gave it another enchantment. One that he worked on for months to perfect. He wove a spell into the thimble that would make her embroidery once finished, come to life.

It took quite a long time to perfect and he wasn’t able to give it to her until she was working on the final tapestry for the school. She meant it to be a surprise for her fellow founders, an image of all of them together that she had worked tirelessly to perfect. The surprise was on her, after she completed it using Salazar’s thimble, the images came to life and moved about on the woven surface. The original tapestry is lost to history. But the thimble was kept by Helga till she died.

Even after division between the founders, it reminded her that there is kindness and love in the world.

Once Slytherin left the castle and as each house became divided the thimble became even more precious to her. At some point a group of radical wizards tried to round up everything Salazar Slytherin had ever invented so they could preserve the legacy of Slytherin and keep it safe from people with Muggle blood, the thimble being among them.

Helga could not bear to see this beautiful gift, given as a gesture of love between friends taken to become an icon of hatred of those that are different. So she devised a plan and hid it until a time came when the world was ready.

She wove clues into four tapestries each positioned very near a house common room and bordered in the colours of each house.

One was oak leaves, which represent honour. Only when honour was restored to the wizarding world would the thimble be safe.

Another was the moon, which represents enlightenment. Only when the wizarding world possessed the wisdom to see beyond the differences in others, would they be able to see the power in such a simple object.

A third was the apple tree, which represents love. Only once the ancient power of love was recognized for the strength it possessed, could the wizarding world protect itself from those that wish it evil.

And the final tapestry bore the seashell, which represents, resurrection.

Once each was discovered and put together the thimble could be restored to its rightful home. On the back of each tapestry she wove in a map coordinate that led to the small cottage that was her family home. She entrusted the secret with only one person, an apprentice of hers, a kind rising star in the field of Herbology, who also helped tend to her in her old age. She told him to pass the secret down and keep it safe, until the day came that someone worthy came to find her most precious treasure.

It is well known that the story of Helga’s Thimble passed into legend and many of the wizards, witches of Hogwarts weren’t truly sure about the verity of the tale. Many Hogwarts teachers throughout the decades expressed the belief that Helga’s Thimble was only a fable, told over and over like the story of the Three Brothers had been.

Of course, subsequent events have shown the wix of England that the Legend of Three Brothers was no fiction. Harry Potter’s usage of the three Deathly Hallows to defeat Voldemort showed us all that legends can often be the truth. As a result, public interest in Helga’s Thimble grew exponentially.

This was spearheaded by Antiquities Expert Draco Malfoy. His specific interest in this object lay in the role that Salazar Slytherin had in the story. It gave this well known grey figure of history redemption and in doing so offered some degree of redemption for Slytherin House as a whole. The symbolism of Hegla’s thimble is very profound in our post-War world. It stands for unity between the Hogwarts Houses and offers a potent symbol of hope for the future.

Mr. Malfoy was kind enough to share his findings with the Auror department. It was his belief that the location of the Thimble was hinted at in the symbolism sewn into the enchanted tapestries that Helga made. Some of these hints included:

a. A conch shell. This led the Auror team to believe the Thimble was beside the sea.

b. Oak leaves. This led the Auror team to consider that it might be in a wooded area.

c.  An apple tree.

d. A picture of a lake under a full moon.

All of these symbols led the investigating offices to the home of wizard Nicolas Culpepper. (His name was familiar to the Auror team: he was descended from the eighteenth century Herbologist of the same name. His famous book, The English Physician is still used at St Mungos) He was a very distant relation of Helga and his family had been keeping the Thimble under their protection since the days of the Hogwarts founders over a thousand years before. When Culpepper showed the Auror team the precious object it glowed with powerful innate magic. Green sparkles filled the room and the Auror team were awed with the power of Helga’s Thimble.

After a thousand years its time had come once again to reunite the Houses of Hogwarts.

Conclusions:

We must always remember that old legends can carry the truth if we are only willing to listen to them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

New Little Brother/Homeland edition is out today!

Today marks the publication of a new edition of Little Brother (2008) and its sequel, Homeland (2013), with a gorgeous cover by Will Staehle and a spectacular intro by Snowden.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

I wrote Little Brother in a kind of white heat, finishing the first draft in eight weeks exactly, from first having the idea to typing "The End" (while away on holiday for my anniversary, at 5AM).

It reflected my fear and rage at the co-option of networked tech for surveillance and control, and the indifferent political response to these alarming developments.

https://www.tor.com/2018/04/26/ten-years-of-cory-doctorows-little-brother/

Alas, this fear and rage futureproofed the tale, as we continue to regulate tech badly and inadequately, to treat it variously as a video on demand service, or a pornography delivery service, or a radicalization vector, rather than as the nervous system of the 21st century.

But I have hope this is changing: the pandemic, in particular, has shattered our complacency about tech, made us realize that everything we do involves the net, and shortly, everything we do will require it. It must be taken seriously, and its defects treated as alarming.

And while the pandemic marks a phase-change in our relations to tech, it comes as the result of a long, steady, mounting tech reform movement.

I wrote Little Brother after the AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein walked into EFF's Shotwell St offices and revealed that his employer had built a secret NSA listening post inside its Folsom St switching enter.

This sparked lawsuits and hearings, including the notorious Senate hearing in which Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

And in which Clapper perjured himself, answering, "No, sir. … Not wittingly."

We knew he was lying. So did a young, idealistic technologist who had washed out of Special Forces training after a severe injury and ended up working for the CIA and NSA.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/19/james-clappers-perjury-dc-made-men-dont-get-charged-lying-congress-jonathan-turley-column/1045991001/

That technologist was Edward Snowden, and the spectacle of Clapper's lies to Congress and the American people prompted him to do something that would alter the course of our history. It also sent him into exile.

And when he left his Hong Kong hotel room and went underground, he had a book in his carry-on: Homeland, the sequel to Little Brother.

Macmillan reissued Little Brother/Homeland between a single set of covers as a run-up to October's publication of ATTACK SURFACE, a third, standalone book about technologists work surveilling protest movements, and how they rationalize to themselves.

https://read.macmillan.com/promo/attacksurfacepreordercampaign/

It's a story about comparmentalization, self-deception, amends-making and redemption, and it addresses itself to the ways that individual actions relate to systemic changes: how movements are made up of individuals but are bigger than individuals.

When Snowden agreed to write the intro to this reissue, I was delighted and honored, even moreso than when I saw that footage of him putting HOMELAND into his bag in Laura Poitras's outstanding, Oscar-winning doc, CITIZENFOUR.

I was also delighted to have the chance to make some small corrections to the text, reflecting my own evolution in thought and language - this is the author's preferred text.

You can get it at any bookstore, but if you're after a signed/personalized copy, the good folks at Dark Delicacies are taking orders and I'm going to to drop in and deface them to order:

https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

[grigori77]

Top 10 Horror Movies, like, EVER (reissued)

10.  THE MIST

In 2007, writer/director Frank Darabont once again proved he does his best work when adapting master of literary horror Stephen King (after The Green Mile and solid gold masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption), this time turning to pure horror with one of the author’s lesser-known early novellas.  The result is another tour-de-force cinematic blueprint, a taut, harrowing tale of humanity pushed far beyond the brink by unexplained supernatural events and the monstrous lengths normal people will go to to stay alive, as a small-town New England supermarket is cut off from the outside world by a mysterious, monster-filled mist.  The Expanse’s Thomas Jane proves a complex hero, beefy yet vulnerable as local artist David Drayton, leading a high-calibre cast of Stephen King-movie/TV regulars – Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile), Andre Braugher (Salem’s Lot), William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) and Frances Sternhagen (Misery) – and “newcomers” – Laurie Holden (who must have really impressed Darabont, since he subsequently cast her alongside DeMunn in The Walking Dead), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s Toby Jones (as one of the most unorthodox action heroes in cinematic history) and Miller’s Crossing’s Marcia Gay Harden, pretty much stealing the film as deeply unhinged Bible-basher Mrs Carmody, who goes from unsavoury town nut to fervent cult leader as the situation grows increasingly desperate.  Darabont once again proves what an exceptional screen storyteller he can be, effortlessly weaving an atmosphere of mounting dread and knife-edge tension, as well as delivering some nightmarish set-pieces featuring magnificent Lovecraft-inspired beasties designed by The Walking Dead’s creature effects master Greg Nicotero.  When cinematic horror was becoming increasingly saturated with “gorno” Saw-derivatives, this was a welcome return to old-fashioned monster movie thrills (Darabont himself was heavily inspired by the monochrome scary movies of his childhood, and longed to make the film in black-and-white – indeed, this is definitely worth watching at least once in the “director’s cut” B&W version he included on the special edition DVD release), and not only proved one of the best examples of King on screen to date, but also one of THE key horror movies of the “Noughties”. Not least thanks to that ending, one of the greatest sucker punch twists of all time – reputedly King was most envious of Darabont on seeing it for the first time, wishing he’d thought it up himself. Coming from the King of Horror, that’s high praise indeed.

9.  30 DAYS OF NIGHT

When Steve Niles, the undisputable master of post-modern horror comics, originally came up with the concept for his definitive work, it was intended for the big screen, but he ultimately wound up committing it to print because he just couldn’t get anyone to produce it.  Interesting, then, that the comic’s runaway success led to its optioning by Sam Raimi and his production company Ghost House Pictures, Niles adapting the first volume alongside Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, with Hard Candy director David Slade at the helm. Of course, the concept was always a killer – for one month every year, the sun never rises over the Alaskan town of Barrow, a fact that a coven of hungry vampires have decided to exploit in a midwinter free-for-all feeding frenzy.  Josh Hartnett manfully crumbles in what remains his best role as town sheriff Eben Olemaun, ably supported by Melissa George as his estranged fire-marshal wife Stella, Memento/Batman Begins’ Mark Boone Junior as hard-as-nails town loner Bo, Ben Foster (one of my very favourite actors) as a mysterious drifter with a dark agenda, and Danny Huston, who created one of the best ever screen vampires with nihilistic pack leader Marlow. It’s ironic that David Slade should have followed this with Twilight film Eclipse (although he was an inspired choice – after all, it’s the one that DOESN’T suck) – this is about as far removed from the toothless, blood-lite young adult series as you can get, an unrelenting, gore-drenched exercise in relentless carnage and ice-cold terror.  These vamps wouldn’t be caught (ahem) dead sparkling – they’re man-shaped mako sharks, all dead black eyes and jagged teeth, gleefully revelling in slaughter and playing sadistic games of cat and mouse with the isolated townsfolk.  This is definitely not a movie for the faint of heart, and it takes itself deadly seriously right through the unapologetically bleak ending, but it is nonetheless an endlessly rewarding thrill ride for the faithful, paying respect to all the great conventions of the genre while simultaneously ripping them to shreds.  Brutal, bloody and brilliant, this is BAR NONE the best vampire movie of the post-Interview age, and very nearly my all-time favourite EVER ...

8. POLTERGEIST

1982 saw the release of TWO of my all-time fave horror movies, and the lesser (but no less awesome) of the two is what I personally consider to be THE DEFINITIVE haunted house movie.  Tobe Hooper, director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, pretty much reinvented ghosts on the big screen with this thrilling tale of a small-town-American family, the Freelings, whose seemingly perfect home comes under the influence of a powerful supernatural force.  At first the effects are harmless – moving furniture and the like – until a night-time thunderstorm signals a terrifying escalation and younger daughter Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is sucked through a portal into the spirit world.  Long before he was the dad in The Incredibles, Craig T. Nelson had already become a pretty definitive cuddly American screen father as Steven Freeling, while JoBeth Williams is a lioness defending her cubs as mother Diane; then-newcomer Heather O’Rourke, meanwhile, is a naturalistic revelation as Carol-Anne, her innocent delivery of “They’re here!” becoming a genuine geek phenomenon all on its own, but the film’s real runaway performance comes from Zelda Rubinstein as diminutive Southern belle psychic medium Tangina Barrons, whose every screen moment is a quirky joy.  As you’d expect, Hooper’s scares are flawlessly executed, the atmospheric tension ratcheted with consummate skill, even if the director’s characteristic gore is kept to a PG-13-friendly minimum ... then again, this was a summer offering from Back to the Future producers Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg himself, who was also the main screenwriter. Indeed, his influence is keenly felt throughout – the suburban world the Freelings inhabit is very much in keeping with Spielberg classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. – and there have been consistent rumours that he was all but the de-facto director on set.  The film (along with its sequels) has also gained a reputation for being cursed, with no less than FOUR cast members dying not long after (most notably Dominique Dunne, who played elder Freeling daughter Dana, who was murdered by her boyfriend just five months after the film’s release).  Whatever the truth behind these rumours, there’s no denying this is a cracking film – taut, atmospheric and consistently terrifying while also displaying a playful, quirky sense of humour and lots of heart, it remains one of the most rewarding and entertaining screen ghost stories around.

7.  BUBBA HO-TEP

Bruce Campbell is Elvis Presley!  He really is!  Although maybe he isn’t ... all right, TECHNICALLY he’s Sebastian Haff, a washed-up, long-retired Elvis impersonator languishing in a retirement home who claims he really IS the King (apparently he swapped places with the REAL Haff because he’d grown tired of fame).  Meanwhile one of his fellow residents is an old black man who claims he’s the real JFK, maintaining that President Lyndon Johnson had him dyed black and secreted in anonymity with a bag of sand sewn into the gap in his brain ... confused yet? Well hold on, cuz there’s more – the retirement home in question has been invaded by the malevolent spirit of a cursed soul-sucking mummy, and only these two fallen heroes can save the day ... yup, writer/director Don (Phantasm and John Dies At the End) Coscarelli’s initially criminally overlooked but deservedly seriously cult adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s novel is as typically oddball as the rest of his filmography.  It’s also his most moving and spiritual work to date – behind all the supernatural weirdness and quirky, offbeat humour this is a deeply-affecting meditation on the pains of growing old and losing your place in the world.  Bruce Campbell’s Elvis/Haff is a tragic hero, regretting his current lot and pining for former glories, but he still has the odd little twinkle of his former charm and bravado (particularly during his interactions with his nurse, played with spiky gutsiness by Ella Joyce), while screen legend Ossie Davis is stately and charismatic as “the former President Kennedy”, even when he sounds REALLY crazy.  Meanwhile the creature, “Bubba Ho-Tep” himself (Bob Ivy), is a fantastically weird creation, Coscarelli’s skilful use of atmospherics elevating him far above the “guy-in-a-suit” effects – he’s mean, cranky, and just as strong a character as his flesh-and-blood counterparts.  Coscarelli really let rip on this one – it’s chock-full of his characteristic leftfield comic-scariness (Elvis/Haff’s early encounter with one of the mummy’s scarab familiars is a particular zany gem), visually inventive and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, but in the end plays out on such a heartfelt, genuinely powerful and moving denouement that you can’t help getting a lump in your throat, even while it is one of those movies that leaves you with a big dumb goofy grin on your face.  It’d be pretty sweet if Coscarelli and his mate Paul Giamatti ever get their long-gestating “prequel” Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires off the ground, but this is one that you can’t help loving all on its own.  See this if you’re a Coscarelli fan – it’s his best work to date – see this if you love quirky, unusual and original horror ... hell, see this if you love MOVIES. This is a true GEM, not to be missed.

6.  DOG SOLDIERS

My favourite werewolf movie is also easily one of the most offbeat – think The Howling meets Assault On Precinct 13 and you’re pretty close to the mark.  Before visionary British horror director Neil Marshall had his big break with masterpiece The Descent, he made an impressive cult splash with his feature debut, a fiendish comedy horror in which a six-man British Army unit on training manoeuvres in the wilds of Scotland stumbles upon a pack of hungry werewolves and are forced to take shelter in an isolated cottage.  With their ammo dwindling and their weapons largely ineffective against the monsters (not a silver bullet between them, of course), it doesn’t look likely that ANY of will survive the night ... setting the humour dial for JET BLACK, Marshall keeps the atmosphere tense and the substantial gore flying (I was amazed when I saw this in the cinema that it was only a 15 – even just ten years earlier stuff like this was GUARANTEED a solid 18 certificate), while the squaddies are a likeably foul-mouthed bunch with a winning, sometimes enjoyably geeky line in spiky banter (Marshall makes frequent references to everything from Star Trek and The Evil Dead to The Matrix and, in one of my favourite nods, Zulu).  Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd is brawny but enjoyably self-deprecating as nominal hero Cooper, Sean (son of Doctor Who Jon) Pertwee gives great earthy-shoutiness as Sgt. Wells, Darren Morfitt consistently steals the film as mouthy little bugger “Spoon” (short for Witherspoon), and Game Of Thrones star Liam Cunningham injects a strong dose of dark and dangerous as Captain Ryan, the special forces operative with a sinister plan, while Emma Cleasby is far from just a token female as zoologist Megan, who came to Scotland in search of the legend and seems to have found a whole lot more than she bargained for – she’s smart, tough and flat-out refuses to be a love interest, and definitely proved a good trial run for Marshall’s all-female cast in The Descent.  It’s impressively paced – after an initial character-driven set-up so we can get to know the lads (including a fun little scare-on-top-of-a-laugh moment), the action kicks in fast and rarely lets up for the rest of the film’s tightly-packed 105 minute running time.  The set pieces are thrilling and frequently fun (particularly Spoon’s ballsy little distraction technique), and the werewolves are impressively brought to life through physical animatronics created by Image FX (the Hellraiser effects team!) and a talented troupe of stilt-walking stunt performers – no cheesy CGI here!  Altogether it marked a blinding debut for a singular, visionary sci-fi/horror talent who’s still making his presence felt – Doomsday was a delightfully old-school slice of super violent sci-fi in the John Carpenter vein, while tight, gruesome little Roman-era suspense thriller Centurion proved that a historical epic doesn’t have to be 2+ hours long with a big budget to impress, and Marshall continues to garner real acclaim through his extensive TV work on the likes of Game of Thrones. That said, I can’t wait for him to return to the big screen, preferably with more dark, edgy, blood-soaked fun like this ...

5. TREMORS

I’ve always had something of a bias towards horror movies that are also comedies, or at least that have a strong sense of humour throughout, and when it comes to funny horror movies, this brilliant throwback to cheesy 1950s monster movies is KING, baby!  While it snuck in under the radar on its 1990 release, director Ron Underwood’s sleeper universally wowed critics, word of mouth helping it to become an impressive cult smash once it hit home video ... which meant I saw it at JUST the right time, the film quickly becoming a firm fixture in my favourites lists and a major milestone in my own geek development.  The premise is simplicity itself – giant underground worms with tentacles in their mouths terrorise an isolated desert community – but underneath the goofy concept is a surprisingly sophisticated movie that continues to influence filmmakers today.  Kevin Bacon was in a bit of a career slump at the time (Footloose had been SO LONG before), but this gave him both the shot in the arm he needed and one of his most memorable roles ever – odd-jobbing slacker Val McKee, who has to get off his arse and think big to beat the beasties; Fred Ward is the perfect foil as Val’s crotchety “business” partner Earl Basset, while Finn Carter is thoroughly lovable as scientist Rhonda LeBeck, a no-nonsense smart girl who can go toe-to-toe with the boys (and manages to lose her pants WITHOUT losing her credibility), but the film is consistently stolen by Family Ties star Michael Gross as tightly wound survivalist Burt Gummer – this might be Bacon’s movie, but Gross is the real star, deservedly becoming the driving force of the film’s various sequels AND the spinoff TV series.  The film opens with a killer of a funny line, starting as it means to go on – frequently hilarious and smart as a whip, consistently defying character and genre tropes and wrong-footing the viewer almost a decade before Joss Whedon started doing the same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all the while balancing the belly laughs with some genuinely scary set pieces.  The worms themselves (or “Graboids”, if you want to get specific) are spectacular creations, some of the most original movie monsters out there, and they still stand up well today, just like the rest of the film.  A cornerstone of the genre that wins over new fans with each generation, this is one of those films that deserves to be remembered for a very long time, and looks set to do just that. 

4.  EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN

Nobody does screen chaos like Sam Raimi, particularly when it comes to his horror offerings – still his first and purest love. His original debut feature The Evil Dead is rightly considered the DEFINITIVE indie horror, and to this day remains the standard blueprint for all young, aspiring directors starting out in the genre ... it’s also a work of pure, unadulterated MADNESS once it gets going.  Raimi upped the ante with this part-remake, part-sequel, the increased budget and proper studio resources meaning he could REALLY let his imagination run riot, and the results are a cavalcade of tongue-clean-THROUGH-cheek, jet black comedic insanity that STILL has yet to be equalled.  Bruce Campbell returns as unlikely “hero” Ash Williams, thoroughly out of his depth and failing miserably to hold it together as the ancient tome of evil itself, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (“Book of the Dead”), unleashes a horde of undead demons on the isolated forest cabin he’s brought his girlfriend to.  Wildly expanding on the supernatural back-story of his original, Raimi and co-writer Scott Spiegel also ramped up the humour, playing the horror on the blackest edge they can, albeit cut with a hefty dose of Tex Avery – Ash’s battle with his own possessed, eventually severed hand is like some demented skit out of The Three Stooges, while the absolute comedic highlight is the ridiculously over-the-top “laughing room” sequence, in which the seemingly inanimate objects in the cabin suddenly come to life and begin to taunt Ash; add in the great wealth of re-view-friendly visual in-jokes scattered throughout and this remains Raimi’s FUNNIEST film to date. Campbell clearly had a ball, throwing himself into the action with everything he had, and he’s ably supported by a meaty (ahem) cast that includes a very pre-Slither Dan Hicks as a seriously scuzzy redneck and Raimi’s own brother Ted, virtually unrecognisable as one of the maniacal Deadites (“I’ll swallow your soul!”).  The creature effects from the great Greg Nicotero still stand up spectacularly well today (they remain some of his very best work), from hideous gurning beasts to insane fountains of blood, while Raimi’s direction is pitch-perfect, playing the humour beautifully while still (sometimes simultaneously) building up a near-unbearable atmosphere of unholy dread, and the climax is ingenious, beautifully setting things up for the enjoyably madcap trilogy-closer Army of Darkness: the Medievil Dead.  Raimi has finally brought the trilogy the follow-up fans had been waiting decades for with the fantastically bonkers Ash Vs. the Evil Dead series, but this delirious masterpiece remains the franchise’s zenith.  Groovy ...

3.  JAWS

It may be the oldest film on this list (released in 1975, it’s THREE YEARS OLDER than I am!), but Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough feature has aged incredibly well.  Indeed, it almost single-handedly changed the face of big budget cinema, establishing the idea of tent-pole summer blockbusters and blanket-bombardment advertising campaigns (in particularly it was one of the first to make heavy use of television to drum up excitement and interest), ultimately taking over $400,000,000 on its original release (the equivalent of multi-billion big earners like Avatar today) and paving the way for Star Wars two years later.  Not to mention the film’s famous negative effect on beach-going for years after ... but under all that there’s a magnificent, masterfully-crafted film, still (rightly) considered one of the director’s best.  The plot may be ridiculously simple – New England beach-community Amity Island is terrorised by a man-eating Great White shark – but there’s a stealthily subversive story here, taking old genre conventions and twisting them in new, unexpected directions (which would, ironically, form a template for a great many later horror movies); while the first hour is a slow-burn thriller, the second is more like a light-hearted nautical action adventure with added scares. The French Connection’s Roy Scheider virtually CREATED the everyman-out-of-his-depth hero with his portrayal of Amity police chief Martin Brody, a former New York cop who’s terrified of the water, Richard Dreyfuss is lovable comedic gold as rich kid marine biologist Matt Hooper, Lorraine Gary did a lot with very little as Brody’s wife Ellen, and Robert Shaw effortlessly steals the film as shark hunter Quint, a ferocious, scenery-chewing force of nature in the mould of Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab.  The film is immensely rich in great character moments, from Hooper’s rib-tickling arrival on the island and the dialogue-free moment Brody shares with his younger son Sean, to the undeniable high point of the film, where a humorous comparison of scars (which has itself become a popular homage-magnet in film and TV) leads to Quint chilling account of his wartime experience onboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis (the ship transporting the Hiroshima atomic bomb which was torpedoed in the Pacific, leading to over a thousand stranded sailors being eaten alive by sharks); indeed, this is one of Spielberg’s most well-written films, sitcom writer Carl (The Odd Couple) Gottlieb’s polish of author Peter Benchley’s adaptation of his own original novel still zipping and zinging today, although some of the best dialogue was derived from the actors’ own on-set improvisations (most famously Scheider’s now-legendary “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”).  It’s also one of his most well-directed, with near-hypnotic tricks in editing and bold, adventurous choices in atmosphere-building, often a result of the shoot’s infamous difficulties – the animatronic shark (affectionately named “Bruce” by the director, and “the Great White Turd” by the crew) created by Bob Mattley (the guy who did the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) was impressive when it worked, but this was so rarely that the director had to devise several means of creating maximum tension WITHOUT showing the shark, which ultimately ADDS to the effectiveness of those scenes, particularly the “barrel-chasing” in the second half.  None of these tricks, however, work better than the score from Spielberg’s most faithful collaborator, John Williams, based around a deceptively simple four-note melody that evolves into something spectacularly evocative, which has rightly become the film’s most iconic element.  Humorous, intriguing, intense and still thoroughly terrifying when it wants to be, this is, bar-none, the finest man-versus-nature horror EVER MADE, and surely always will be.

2.  NEAR DARK

I’m a fool for vampires (much like I’m a fool for redheads, but that’s a whole other conversation), so bloodsucker horror is one of my very favourite sub-genres.  I’m also a big fan of Kathryn Bigelow – two of her most recent features, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, both pinged VERY LOUDLY on my radar (the former is my favourite war movie of the current decade), while her collaboration with then husband James Cameron, Strange Days (he wrote, she directed), rates high on my list of criminally underrated screen gems.  So what do you think happened when she made a vampire movie?  The results SHOULD have become one of the most celebrated and legendary features in the genre ... except that it came out in October 1987, two months after the admittedly cool and fun but far more glossy and dumb The Lost Boys.  Needless to say in the wake of that, Bigelow’s film got kind of lost in the back chatter, nearly flopping at the box office and all but vanishing into obscurity ... until its subsequent release on video (quite rightly) earned it an impressive cult following.  Myself included, because this movie is RIGHT UP my dark and dangerous alley.  Collaborating with The Hitcher’s screenwriter Eric Red, Bigelow crafted a (largely) deadly serious modern day supernatural “western”, in which cocky farm-boy Caleb Colton (Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar) hits on cute drifter Mae (Jenny Wright, probably best known for her supporting turn in Young Guns 2), only to get WAY more than he bargained for when her kiss leaves him with a crippling hunger and one serious tanning problem.  Pasdar’s all-knowing youthful swagger disintegrates as he tumbles further down the vampiric rabbit hole, while Wright’s fragile beauty compliments her character’s deep, soulful melancholy – the pair make for a compelling, tragic romantic centre anchoring the horrors that unfold as Caleb begins to lose himself to his burgeoning nature; even so, the true dark and twisted soul of the film lies with Mae’s predatory nomad “family” – Lance Henriksen is the definitive “dark father” as nihilistic pack leader Jesse Hooker, while his Aliens co-star Jenette Goldstein is his perfect mate as punk rock femme fatale Diamondback, and Joshua John Miller excels as Homer, the bitter old man trapped in a child’s body ... meanwhile Bill Paxton consistently steals the film as mad dog Severen, chewing the scenery to splinters with gleeful, feral aplomb and stealing all the best lines.  It’s a potent, heady ride, taking itself pretty seriously throughout but deriving a subtle, inky black sense of gallows humour from the situation, and the set-pieces are intense and thrilling (particularly the shootout in a roadside motel at dawn, where shafts of sunlight become as lethal as bullets).  At times it’s also powerful, soulful and bleakly beautiful, Bigelow’s heavily stylised visuals brilliantly augmented by the spiky electronic score from Tangerine Dream. It also subverts the classic vampire conventions with great skill and originality, with nary a cross, coffin or even fang in sight.  Like 30 Days of Night, this is the perfect antidote for anyone suffering from Twilight-overload – the monster can be quite interesting when he’s the hero, but he’s just so much more fun when he’s the bad guy ...

1.  JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING

While I’m sure many will think I’m mad for preferring this over Carpenter’s other seminal horror classic Halloween, this one’s much more my speed, a perfect exercise in sustained tension, paranoia and white-knuckle terror. Critically mauled and under-performing on its release (it was labelled by many as a sort of “anti-E.T.: the Extraterrestrial”, which came out two weeks earlier ... and interestingly this opened the same day as Blade Runner!), it nonetheless became a massive cult hit now rightly considered one of the true DEFINITIVE horror movies.  Faithfully adapting John Campbell, Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? (certainly more so than Howard Hawks’ admittedly entertaining but ultimately very kitsch The Thing From Another World), it revolves around the all-male crew of U.S. research station 4, Outpost 31, in Antarctica, who come under threat from a body-snatching alien entity that can perfectly imitate its victims after investigating the mysterious destruction of a neighbouring Norwegian facility.  Carpenter regular Kurt Russell (Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China) is at his gruff best as helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, the taciturn blue-collar Joe called upon to play “hero”, Keith David (Pitch Black, Carpenter’s They Live) angrily flexes his acting and physical muscles as hot-tempered researcher Childs, Donald Moffat crumbles as ineffectual station commander Garry, and screen legend Wilford Brimley effortlessly makes the exposition compelling as tightly-wound biologist Blair.  The freezing Antarctic atmosphere perfectly complements the razor-edged suspense, the idea that ANYONE could be the creature lending every scene a palpable sense of implied threat, while the science of the fiction is thankfully largely put on the back-burner in favour of the story and scares; meanwhile there’s a cheeky edge of jet black humour throughout, from the scuttling disembodied head to Garry’s explosive reaction to MacReady’s improvised humanity-test.  Rob (The Howling, Robocop, Fight Club) Bottin’s fantastically nightmarish creature effects are a magnificent achievement, still looking as good today as they did back in 1982, while master composer Ennio Morricone’s subtle, atmospheric score is a triumph of creepy, insidious subliminal effect.  For me, this film is the definition of fear – the idea that the threat could be literally ANYONE, that you could even become that yourself, be taken over completely, body and soul, is absolutely terrifying, and Carpenter executes this potential reality with surgical precision from the intriguing, icy start to the bleak, desolate ending.  Perfect.

[real-jaune-isms]

RWBY Volume 7 Chapter 6 Review/Runthrough

I know I’m very late with this, but finals were hell. 

This chapter went from a middle ground of curious tension to the highest hype to the deepest dread and despair over the course of its roughly 16 minutes of run time and I hated that. And I love it. I hope y’all did too, but let’s take it step by step together.

It starts somewhat close to where chapter 5 left off, the riots in Mantle have been quelled and several people are in handcuffs, including three familiar thirsty moms. Guess the Happy Huntresses are popular with housewives, wish fulfillment of making a difference in the world yourself and all that. Robyn herself is being interviewed as we’re shown the riot aftermath and people getting in line to vote at electronic polling machines. And we get our first major surprise of the episode. There were two other candidates we never heard about, Ivy Brown and Pearl Wistier! So can we get some F’s in the comments for these two, who didn’t get any recognition or screen time and with the election ending probably never will? As Robyn talks about hoping voters will make the right choice and that the connection between her supporters and the riots is pure coincidence, we see Team RWBY and JNR training while Oscar watches. Blake and Yang are jumping around atop towers, Weiss is sparring with Winter again, Ruby is practicing her semblance, Ren meditates, and Nora and Jaune are bouncing a dodgeball back and forth to test his new shield. The Bees jumping around reminded me a little of the Chibi episode where they played tag, so I liked that. Weiss bounces Winter’s Beowolf around on black glyphs in a manner that made me think of a move Sans uses in Undertale, a very fun connection, and then she knocks Winter off guard by sending a small version of her knight to attack Winter’s ankle. Her playful smirk says she’s not sorry~ Ruby’s petal form splits into three parts to go around a pillar, and Oscar finally calls her out on that being a little unusual if her Semblance really is speed. The dodgeball keeps getting hit harder and harder as Nora puts her thunderous all into it until it dissolves against Jaune’s shield when he uses the Dust upgrades to better defend. He takes some damage to his Aura but recovers again very quickly, much to Oscar’s enthusiasm. Ren’s meditation seems to suggest he’s trying to unlock some kind of precognition or ability to sense other people like he had in Volume 4 when Tyrian was approaching to ambush them. But he doesn’t quite get it down yet and instead Ironwood and Clover enter.

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Ironwood is impressed by how hard the teens are pushing themselves, with Ruby affirming it to be necessary with the current state of affairs, and Ironwood seems to think the info on his Scroll is evidence of that. The poll numbers favor Robyn, which is undeniably better than Jacques winning even if the Happy Huntresses and the military are in a silent stand off, and the young heroes think the general should make more of an effort to be open with her about what they are doing since they’re all on the same side of wanting to help Mantle. Nora argues for the sake of Mantle quite vehemently, furthering my theory and probably many others’ that she was born here. Jaune seems to agree, but Ironwood says that kind of communication will have to be a two way street and by his tone of voice I’m guessing he doubts that will happen any time soon. Before Nora can offer a rebuttal Ren asks why the General is here. Turns out, with the election happening tonight and the teams having done so much work recently, they’ve decided the kids should get the night off before things really start changing once Robyn or Jacques is elected. Ruby doesn’t seem to like thinking about that, probably because everything  in Atlas will get very different once the Amity Project is complete and she still doesn’t know how that will go. 

Regardless, Team RWBY make plans for the evening. While Weiss stands around glumly looking at the news feed on her Scroll, Blake puts on some eye makeup that I’m too uninformed to know the name of and Yang stares longingly at her from her bed. At least, that’s how I saw it. The two of them are going dancing with Team FNKI, in a club where it will be too loud for Yang to be able to hear Neon’s voice. Just the way she likes it~ Meanwhile Ruby is going with Ren and Nora to meet up with Penny at a party in Mantle to celebrate Robyn’s surefire win of the election. Because overconfidence like that has never backfired in media before. Weiss is still mentally torn about her father’s big layoff stunt and how in the world he thought it would actually work out for him with what a cunning man he’s always been. Yang thinks it was just a power play that backfired, but Weiss worries there’s a grander scheme below the surface. Then she’s asked which group activity she would rather be a part of, so after seeing Blake’s adorkable attempt to do a dance move Yang is showing her she chooses the suddenly appearing third option: going to the movies with Jaune and Oscar. Volume 2 Jaune would be so impressed his older self got Weiss to agree to that kind of thing with minimal effort... but also be very upset by all the terrible things that happened to the guy up to that point. So it barely matters to our Jaune anymore. Still, hope it was a good movie cuz that’s the last we see of those three for the rest of the chapter.

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Ruby and Renora are next seen walking down the street as celebrating Robyn fans pass by in a truck. Ren admits he sees Weiss’ point about celebrating a bit soon but Nora tries to be an optimist about it, that the people should be allowed to enjoy this supposed surefire thing. Ruby admits nothing will probably be a sure thing anymore once the Tower goes up and Salem’s existence becomes known, with Ren and Nora affirming that they’ve spent so long worrying about the secrets they’ve been keeping they haven’t thought about how they would have no plan to face her even once they get past that. Afterall, Jinn said she can’t be beaten. Ruby reminds them the exact phrasing was that she told Oz he couldn’t destroy her, and Nora picks up on the specifics. If Oz can’t, then maybe someone else can. And with her Silver Eyed powers Ruby seems like their best gamble for that. Personally I’m still of the mind that the point Jinn was trying to make wasn’t that “Oz can’t destroy Salem” and was instead that “Oz can’t destroy Salem”. Redemption and the restoration of her kinder former soul may be the best solution to this. But who knows? Regardless, Ren is restless and thinks they should go back to training, that they don’t have time to waste with social gatherings and fun distractions, but Nora says they’ve done enough for now and they need to unwind otherwise they’ll snap. So they’re at odds now, unfortunately...

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The three reach the town hall/auditorium where the rally is taking place and meet up with Penny, who is very happy to see them but wonders why it is only these three. Nora explains what Weiss and the boys are doing and that the bees are off doing their own thing, and Ren comments that he’s relieved the two are back on good terms after everything that happened. But Nora sees this as an opportunity to be passive aggressive. See, the situation with Blake and Yang is very similar to her tumultuous “will they won’t they” with Ren. So she calls into question whether or not Blake and Yang are actually just friends or something more intimate and close after being through such deep bonding experiences, but we can tell she’s actually asking about where she and Ren stand. Ren picks up on what she means immediately and fires back how he feels on the matter while keeping up the pretext of this being about the others. It’s kinda funny to realize they’re being so indirect and also teasing how romantic things seem with Blake and Yang when the fandom has been having similar arguments. But it does offer insight into their actual feelings: Nora wants to take that step and has always worn her heart on her sleeve so she’s ready to show how she feels but she also wants to be sure Ren feels the same so she doesn’t misread the signs. But Ren is worried that with all the deep political stuff happening and the impending threat of chaos Salem’s reveal will bring, now isn’t really the right time for relationship stuff. Nora fires back that they can’t figure anything out unless they talk about it, and I do kind of agree. If there’s tension like this between the pair then it might affect their teamwork and trust.

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Ruby wants no part of this awkward conversation and slides over to Penny’s side, who also realizes the argument probably isn’t about the Bees. So the two head backstage instead, where Marrow is waiting and initially seems happy to see Ruby before getting back into a work mindset and says she shouldn’t be here since she’s still an amateur who wasn’t assigned to this job. But Ruby says she’s just here to be with her friend, and offers Penny a fistbump. Penny looks overjoyed to see this invitation, and eagerly gives Ruby a bump. Unfortunately, steel fists really hurt and Ruby’s hand starts throbbing red. Ouch~ Marrow just tells her not to get in the way, since they need to stay vigilant in case of any trouble. He is interrupted by the one and only... May Marigold, one of the Happy Huntresses we saw when they stopped the truck last episode. 

May is... a deep new kind of character, for reasons that have become clear in recent days and were first brought to my mind when I saw the cast list for this episode. May is voiced by Kdin Jenzen, a lovely woman who works for Rooster Teeth and is memorable for such feats as being able to handle super hot chips with ease on the last two RT Extra Life livestreams. She is also a trans woman. This does nothing to diminish my opinion of her and it should not affect yours. This fact also adds a layer of depth to the character, as the likelihood of May being trans as well seemed rather possible. And as of December 17, this is confirmed: May Marigold is RWBY’s first confirmed trans character. An extra layer of diversity to the world of Remnant is most definitely welcome, and it also adds some depth of character to Robyn Hill. Her group is comprised solely of women, and its a very good look for her that she sees May as one every bit as much as Fiona or herself. Because as we all know, TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. Okay, tangent over for now.

May sasses Marrow a bit, saying the Happy Huntresses won’t be the ones causing any trouble and are there to make sure nothing goes wrong. So Marrow can scram, he’s not welcome. The poor pup tries to stand up for his faction, saying Ironwood just wants to help and the Ace Ops are there for good reasons. He’s interrupted by Robyn herself though, who accepts his presence as protective assistance as long as he stays out of the way. Clearly this isn’t what May or Joanna were expecting to hear, but Robyn says they need to learn how to get along if she’s gonna be on the council. Marrow tries to give her attitude by saying getting along will be easy as long as she stays within the law. Clearly her prior roadblocking activities make him think she hasn’t been. She tries to appeal to him and get through the strict military obedience, saying the law isn’t fair to everyone and he shouldn’t always have to obey it to the word. But he’s a Faunus in Atlas, it’s preaching to the choir at this point. She says all she wants to do as a council member is make Mantle and Atlas a better place for everyone, including the Faunus. But Marrow is unmoved, he still wants to guilt her about keeping her activities legal. But she matches his attitude tit for tat, everything so far has been totally legal and he can’t prove otherwise~ Their staredown is interrupted by the absolute angel that is Fiona Thyme causing feedback on the microphone and reminding Robyn she needs to get back to the party activities. Marrow backs off and tells Ruby to leave so he and Penny can do their jobs, so she sticks her tongue out at him behind his back and waves goodbye to Penny before returning to Ren and Nora... where things haven’t gotten any better. So she just turns right around to hang out at the front of the crowd.

Fiona has a very touching speech about how this victory has been a product of Mantle’s united effort to make things better, how this is their moment and they all know Robyn will do right by them. She even gets emotional herself, and then invites Robyn herself to come on stage and talk to the crowd a bit. The two seem to whisper to each other a little, likely encouragement by Fiona that she’ll nail her speech and reassurance from Robyn that the dear girl did a good job just now. Robyn opens with a joke that her difficulty with public speaking is a bad match for this career in politics, and Ruby seems amused. She always has seemed to sympathize with Robyn and think she’s a good person, and for the most part I would agree. 

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The speech proper starts with Robyn thanking her gathered followers for their votes and for thus putting their faith and belief in her. And she assures them the feeling is mutual, that she believes in the strength and change a single determined person can bring just as much as she knows there is unlimited potential to what people can do when they work together.

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And with that unity, it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses because they will all continue to fight for the sake of the city that brings them together. That earns a lot of applause and she leaves the stage, though she starts to show visible concern as the radio announcer points out how close the votes are as the deadline draws fatally near. The Happy Huntresses are still confident she’s got this in the bag...

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But she’s no less tense.

With all this talk of unity in mind, Nora tries again to try and address the tension between her and Ren, but deep talks like this really aren’t his thing. Ren has always been emotionally closed off, it’s just in his nature and with emotion being so important for his Semblance it’s clearly been ingrained in his mindset for a long time. Talking is not his love language, he’s always shown how he feels through acts of physical contact. Hugs, leaning on her, holding her hand at the end of Volume 4. So while she’s seeking verbal validation that it is something deeper between them, he’s not used to that and doesn’t really know how to articulate himself and express all his feelings how he wants to. That’s how I interpret it anyway. Nora gets her own read out of his attempt at an answer, and it seems pretty similar to my takeaway from it. Clearly it was encouraging enough for her to know he does like her back he just has so much on his mind he can’t figure out how to say it. Why? Because she literally says “screw talking” and kisses him!!! A KISS FOR RENORA, 7 YEARS IN THE MAKING!!!!! So the two get blissfully lost in the kiss and each other’s company for a little while, and I’m so happy for them.

Unfortunately, this is where we start to have a bad time. We cut to Watts hiding out somewhere booting up several Scrolls in front of a screen showing drone footage of the party as well as older video of Penny’s hero work in Mantle, and he’s activating tech in his rings as we see that Tyrian is in the party crowd in a cloak ready to strike on his partner’s command. The polls are about to close, Ruby is looking over at Penny happy as can be... and sees Tyrian’s tail. She moves to get a closer look, and eyes meet between former foes. She screams towards the stage to watch out, but it’s too late. The lights go out as the election countdown chant hits one, Ren and Nora are holding each other close unsure what’s happening... and Watts gives the order to begin.

He starts doing vague techno stuff with the Scrolls that‘s mostly theatrical hand waving, while at the party Robyn drops her microphone and Ruby gets knocked to the ground by the panicking crowd. Tyrian has started killing people in the audience, in an attacking style seemingly unlike his usual work. Penny activates her night vision at the prompting of Marrow (who SHOULD be able to see in the dark as a Faunus but maybe he’s in a bad position to see what’s happening or her tech optics can do more than ordinary eyes Faunus or otherwise?) and pulls out her swords before she tells Tyrian to surrender. But either that scorpion boy has some mad jumping skills to get to the rafters or Watts could hack Penny’s eyes, because in the time it takes a panicked person to run in front of her he is gone. Watt’s puppeteer act continues as he seems to lift Penny’s movements from one video and put them into the footage of Tyrian’s massacre over the image of his body. How terribly devious. And with a single tap of a district map on one Scroll he changes which candidate several entire parts of Mantle voted for. He may very well have been doing this little by little over the course of the night so the election fraud would look natural, or maybe a significant portion of people actually were voting for Jacques and Arthur just forced the final push. I think the former is a lot more likely.

Meanwhile, Marrow is calling for backup and Robyn calls her Happy Huntresses to her side so they can all keep each other safe. Fiona wants to get Robyn to safety, and at the last second sees Tyrian running across the stage to attack them. His eyes and right arm both glow purple, and he scratches a hole in Fiona’s Aura before slicing at the exposed spot with the blades on his other arm. Seems his Semblances is being able to tear through Aura and then attack a person’s body directly. Useful skill for a killer like him... Still, we know only his tail is poisonous so she probably won’t die. That was likely on purpose too though... If they found venom in her they would know Penny didn’t do it cuz she doesn’t have anything like that. Speaking of Penny, she flies up to tackle Robyn to the floor when it looks like Tyrian is going to attack her next, but he just jumps up to the rafters and giggles maniacally. This part was planned too, because when the lights come on Penny is the one standing on stage with swords drawn over an injured Fiona and confused Robyn. Much like Pyrrha and to a lesser extend Yang before her, Penny has been set up as a brutal killer. Worse yet...

47%-53%

Jacques has officially won the election and gives a live acceptance speech that seems like a total slap in the face. And if we look more carefully at those lying dead on the floor, a few familiar outfits can be seen. The same thirsty moms last seen getting in trouble for taking part in the riots are now going to be orphaning their children... Whether he meant to or not, Tyrian has proven his ultimate villainous status above all others. Ruby, Marrow, Ren and Nora all rush onto the stage to help Penny and Robyn, but the latter doesn’t trust them at all and the former is in shock that such brutality is blamed on her, that she’s failed her purpose as Mantle’s protector when it mattered most. It’s not helped by the fact that a survivor loudly proclaims Penny did it, and refers to her simply as “Ironwood’s Robot”. Dehumanizing her, saying she’s just another machine that’s been taken over and used as a tool of evil. When the Happy Huntresses and angry members of the crowd charge to attack Penny and those that would try to help her, Marrow uses his Semblance for some literal crowd control, making all of them freeze in place. Ren and Nora are quite unnerved to hear Tyrian was the perpetrator, but they get Penny out the back door to relative safety while Robyn stops pointing her weapon at the girl long enough to shove Ruby out of the way when she was trying to help Fiona. Our dear sheepy says she’s gonna be okay, but Marrow still feels bad and offers assistance. Too bad that means he relaxed enough for his Semblance effect to wear off and Joanna starts shooting at him so he and Ruby leave too, though he does try to assure Robyn that Atlas had nothing to do with this.

Watts uploads his deep faked footage and packs up for the night, telling Tyrian their good work is done. Out in an alley, the good guys catch their breath and quietly panic how bad things just got while Penny just stands in despair and shock. Ruby reaches out a hand to try and reassure her before realizing it’s covered in Fiona’s blood. Marrow tells Penny she has to go back to Atlas, but she’s initially not responsive. She does fly off though,, just as the Grimm attack alarms go off and the others get ready for the long night ahead... with the girls not having their weapons unfortunately. As Manticores are seen flying over Mantle and into the streets, Jacques’ victory speech continues to lay faintly veiled dread into our hearts. 

So yeah. Hell of an episode, and one I took way too long to review. School was hell, just like this chapter.

[trueneutralrants]

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and How it Handled Shadow Weaver

I want to talk about She-ra. 

She-ra and the Princesses of Power is a 5 season Netflix cartoon that premiered in November of 2018, and finished it’s 5th and final season barely a year and a half later in May of this year. The final season was extremely well received, due to its strong emotional theme, well-explained complex topics, and the resolution and redemption of one of it’s strongest characters, Catra.

But the show did not hit only home runs, especially in regard to the strong narative of abuse that had been built up in previous seasons, and that's what I'm here to talk about today.

Let's talk about how to write abusive characters in fiction, and more specifically, how She-ra failed in regard to some of those characters.

Now before I get father into this, I want to just say that the final season of She-ra was, in my opinion, a fantastic end to a wonderful series. The amount of good that show did far outweighed any gripes I have with the show itself, and I honestly think it's a wonderful piece of media, albeit one with some missed opportunities.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand.

She-ra is a very personal, character-driven show, with a strong emphasis on the cycle of abuse, and breaking free of said cycle. This is most strongly presented with the character of Shadow Weaver, the mother figure to the 2 main characters, Adora and Catra. Shadow Weaver is emotionally abusive to the both of them, but obviously hold Adora in higher regard than Catra, and gaslights and manipulates Adora significantly more, keeping Catra in check through physical and emotional abuse, while manipulating Adora into believing it is her duty to carry the responsibility for the both of them. If Catra is abused, it is Adora’s fault for not being better.

That’s the set up for the characters, and shapes both Catra and Adora’s actions throughout the series.

In the first season, we see Adora break free from the Horde after realizing that she is on the wrong side of the war, finding friends who she can depend on. She’s even shown an example of a healthy, non-abusive relationship in Glimmer and Angella. On the other side of the war, Catra stays with her abuser, Shadow Weaver. This shapes the conflict between Adora and Catra, as well as Catra’s motivations to take over the Horde., being that since Shadow Weaver has always lusted after power, Catra sees taking power as her only way to ‘best’ her, while still craving Shadow Weaver’s affection. This leads to Catra verbally and emotionally abusing others, most notably Scorpia.

So many of the most toxic behaviors in both Adora and Catra were learned from Shadow Weaver’s upbringing, and throughout the series, we see them struggle to undo what Shadow Weaver ingrained in them. 

But what is Shadow Weaver’s motivations for her actions, her abuse? Is she pure evil? Is it a misplaced sense of responsibility? Part of a scheme?

We know a few things about Shadow Weaver. First, she has always lusted over power. Second, she was once a magician at Mystacor, then fled to the horde when her lust of power led to her exile. Third, she has very little sense of loyalty, going wherever she feels she will be safest or in the highest position of power. She fled to the Horde after Mystacor because she knew she could gain power and influence there as Hordak’s second-in-command. She fled to Bright Moon after the Horde threatened to send her to Beast Island because she knew she could gain a foothold there manipulating Adora, and later, Glimmer. Fourth, she holds the emotions of others in very little regard unless it directly benefits her. 

So hypothetically, someone who has always put herself first, has always lusted after power and has no problem manipulating and abusing people, including children, for her own benefit is put in a situation where the side she is on is at an extreme disadvantage, as it looks near hopeless. Like, say, fighting a galactic emperor with millions of soldier clones. 

How do you redeem a character when the obvious course of action for that character is to jump ship and save herself?

Before I go into how, I should warn any of the 6 people who’ve watched both She-ra and The Promised Neverland that this next section will include spoilers for the first season of the anime.

Meet Mama Isabella. A selfish, abusive mother figure who manipulates and gaslights all the children under her care, essentially selling the children under her care to demons who kill and eat them. She emotionally abuses Ray, her biological son and the one child who discovers the plot, using him as a spy under constant threat of being ‘shipped out’ or killed and served to the demons. Ray grows up watching the other kids live peacefully, knowing that his own mother has been sending her adopted children to die, and one day it will be his turn. When some of the other children discover her plot, she breaks one of the children’s left leg, verbally taunts the other kids present, and ships out one of the children the next day as a threat to the other’s planning to escape. Her abuse was so damaging to Ray that he tried, at the age of 12 years old, to commit suicide by setting himself and the childhood home on fire as a distraction, so the other kids can escape. Overall, she is Shadow Weaver to an extreme, abusive both physically and mentally.

And her redemption is the best written redemption of any abusive parent i’ve ever read.

Reading that, you’re probably thinking I’m a psycho, but no. Here’s the thing about Isabella that makes her such a fantastic villain. She used to be one of the kids at the farm. She used to be like Ray and all the other children. The way the farms work, some of the older female children who get shipped out are allowed to survive, and are put in training to become “moms” or caretakers and enforcers at the farms. They essentially raise children to be slaughtered, as they themselves were raised. It’s horrific, and it’s the only surefire way to survive into adulthood. But the mom’s are replaceable. Isabella is under as much threat of death as anyone else, including the kids. She has what is essentially a taser implanted in her chest, that’ll stop her heart if she escapes or rebels. Ray’s very existence as someone who knows the secret of the farms puts Isabella's life at risk. One mistake, one slip up, and her life is forfeit. Essentially, it’s the kids lives or hers. 

So she justifies shipping the kids off by telling herself she can take such good care of them for their 6-12 years of living that it doesn’t even matter that they died. She is such an inherently selfish person, but she’s understandable. We understand exactly why she’s doing everything she’s doing. 

And then the kids escape, and we realize Isabella is happy for them. We realize in the last few scenes of the first season, that she’s given up hope on living after they escape. The kids, whether they realized it or not, just traded their mother’s life for their own. They outsmarted her, and thus, Isabella must die at the hand of the farm. Isabella has to accept there are no other options before doing one final act of good to help the children, untying the ropes that show where the children escaped from to throw off the demons, essentially buying the children time. 

And by this point, from the point of view of the audience, Isabella is redeemed, even though she didn’t make any heroic sacrifice, or jump in front of a gun for our heroes. She is redeemed through the small, subtle step of untying the ropes. Though that, we are shown that Isabella isn’t resentful or malicious. She doesn’t want the children to be caught. She doesn’t harbor any hope of them capturing the children and bringing them back to the farm. She doesn’t harbor any hope of living, seeing the children’s escape and her eventual death as penance for being complicit in so many deaths over the years. 

 One of the last things we hear her say in the last chapter of the escape arc is this: “I wish I could have just loved them normally.”

And by that point, we understand exactly the kind of person Isabella was, a person who deeply wanted to love, but wanted to survive more, someone who both justified and regretted the things she had done. And that regret, in itself, was her redemption.

Now going back to Shadow Weaver, we notice many of the same traits that made Isabella a good villain are present in Shadow Weaver. Someone who has always put herself first, has always lusted after power and has no problem manipulating and abusing people, including children, for her own benefit. But unlike Isabella, we never understand why Shadow Weaver is doing what she’s doing, except a general sense that she’s doing it for power. If power is truly her only motivation, she should not sacrifice herself for others, and if there is truly love for others inside her heart, there needs to be a more present way to explore it. 

We can tell she hasn’t really changed in season five due to her forcing Adora to carry the burden of the failsafe, despite the fact it could kill her. Unlike Isabella, we never feel that Shadow Weaver is being forced to do bad deeds or manipulate from an outside force or even her own bad habits. She has the freedom to be both a redeemed hero or a full-on villain, but she does.. neither. 

Up until her sacrifice.

I don’t like Shadow Weaver’s sacrifice. If you wanted her out of the picture, you could’ve had her 1. try and join Horde Prime and have him kill her, 2. Have he chipped and forced Adora and Catra to contemplate whether to save her or not or 3. Just kill her without a sacrifice to show the horror of Prime. All three would feel in character and fit well within the story, because if there is one thing Shadow Weaver isn’t presented as at any point in the story, it's a selfless person.

But instead we get... her sacrifice. First of all, it's confusing. The audience doesn’t know whether we’re supposed to feel that Shadow Weaver was redeemed or not. There is a decidedly mixed feeling in her sacrifice, where the show seems to want to be able to pull on our heartstrings, but still knows half the people watching hate this character and another quarter don’t care about her. 

And Adora and Catra also seem conflicted. The one good thing in the scene, at least for me, is that both Shadow Weaver and Catra seem to acknowledge that the sacrifice, it itself, is not selfless. Shadow Weaver is taking the easy way out, going out with a blaze of glory instead of trying to improve herself and atone for her crimes.

I honestly think in previous seasons, or even just in season 5, if Shadow Weaver were to spend more time trying to apologize and made amends to Adora and Catra, or we got some inner monologue or scenes showing how she cares for the children she abused, and feels she made mistakes, then the sacrifice would’ve worked, at least for me. But Shadow Weaver always felt like an antagonistic force, even in the final season when she was squarely a ‘good guy’. There was no point where it felt like she was sorry for her actions, and nothing that justified them.

I honestly think Shadow Weaver shouldn’t have been redeemed. And that’s what it was, redemption through death. It doesn’t work with her characterization in previous seasons, or even season 5, and it felt, for lack of a better word, cheap.

[lizzybeth1986]

Sorry for this XD, but 1, 4, 9, 11, 26 and 27 for the salty ask? If it's not too much, of course

Don't say sorry! 😁 Thanks for the ask Nonny and apologies for the delay.

I must caution you, the post is going to be long and and there's too much salt in my responses for even me to handle.

1. OTP in fandom that you just do not get.

IDK I most don't give much of a thought to OTPs that I don't get. Like that is the nature of any fandom, that you can see potential for ships even without a say-so from canon.

What I really don't get is the absurd double standards that I see sometimes - how some fans will pull down other LIs/characters to make a favourite look good, how some LIs will be nitpicked to high hell while others can say the grossest things and not be judged. How one character can be judged for the same thing we will admire in another (I'll get to this later).

It's weird, considering the app literally allows you to choose who you will fall for (unless you're wlw or like a character that's a person of colour in a majority-white cast, in which case they will dangle scraps in front of you once every ten chapters, I suppose). You don't need to trash one LI to justify your choice of another. They're there. Stop tearing down an LI while deliberately tagging the character's tag and ship tags for your notes. Go generate (and promote) content for your own ships and characters instead.

4. A personal NOTP? Are they considered an OTP in the fandom?

Hana x Madeleine. Fortunately, lots of people had plenty of problems with this pair and the way it was written in Book 3. The narrative was subtly pushing that ship over the course of Book 3, but the backlash was strong enough that they got Madeleine to issue an apology for her bullying in the epilogue instead (I doubt they even remember the chocolate allergy scene, given that the MC acts like this information is brand new).

It still left a bad taste in my mouth, because it showed me how little the writers cared for Hana as a character, but at least the fandom made sure it didn't become a ship.

9. Most Disliked Character(s):

Hoo boy. I have a freaking list. Besides the really really obvious ones:

• Drake Walker: has way more privilege than he knows what to do with. Narrative acts like he is the Voice of the Commoner...well. I feel sorry for the commoners that don't get to practically live in court without having to change their attire or yap all day about steak, burgers and whiskey. And whose sisters don't have friends that will fleece their entire ancestral house's already-plummeting finances to keep her house running while her brother trash-talks the same friend in Book 1.

• Damien Nazario: is a hypocrite. That is all.

• Constantine: Almost every apology of his has to come punctuated with an excuse. Even if it involves orchestrating sexual assault.

• Madeleine (TRR) and Mallory (RoE): The demonic duo of People PB Wants So Desperately For Me To Forgive™. Without them even having to earn that forgiveness, too (Nana deserves to be on this list too, except the question of forgiveness doesn't even arise when it comes to her. She is worshipped in this series!). I see a small step towards change in D&D Book 2 with Lady Grandmother, but only time will tell if they will actually execute the "will never forgive you" route properly.

• Penelope: is so, so fucking entitled I just can't. I understood how her condition, and manipulation from people like Constantine and Bastien, got her to the point where she would be ready to harm someone. But I can't for the life of me understand how she can forget this so easily after the tea party.

I was hoping for a redemption arc where Penelope recognizes what she's done and unconditionally tries to make amends in Book 3, but that never happened. There was not a single reference in Book 3 to the harm she did you in Book 1. We had to do an immense amount of coddling to convince her to come for the wedding, and there were consequences if you didn't call her your "best friend" or support her demands. The narrative has Drake Walker...Drake "Ambassadors Go To Dangerous Areas, Lady Kiara (So Get Over It)" Freaking Walker...reassure Penelope in a way that Kiara never gets from anyone in the group, and she suffered a knife attack. Ezekiel is literally created out of thin air as a reward for her.

Why does she need a reward again? Who knows.

• Ajay: Didn't apologize.

11. Unpopular Character that You Like that Fandom Doesn't.

(This is going to be loooong. I'm not sorry. This rant has been really, really building up. It's like a dam).

Kiara. It's popular to sorta kinda like her now, but back when she started showing feelings for Drake she got a lot of hate...hate that I feel bled into the treatment she got in the third book.

It took me a while to warm up to Kiara, but I think what did it for me was her friendship with Penelope. She was protective and supportive, even though she lacked an understanding of what Penelope was going through. I was even more pleasantly surprised when she spoke about her bond with Savannah. There was a warmth and a sweetness about Kiara in Book 2 that we didn't see much of in Book 1 and she slowly won me over. When they spoke about her injuries in Book 3, I was looking forward to seeing that story explored.

I will always maintain that Kiara in Book 3 is what happens when both the writing team and the louder, more vocal portion of the fandom are heartless towards a particular character. Heartless is a heavy word, and a word I don't want to be using willy-nilly, but I've seen enough to come to that conclusion in this case.

Kiara was often called an opportunist and a host of other names in the fandom for not supporting the MC through the scandal. Except that we all forget she never promised anything beyond supporting your claim to being picked as future Queen. She tells you straight off the bat in Book 1 that she is looking for allies and not friends (guess who is often admired for that mindset? Madeleine...well, until she harms Hana for flimsy reasons). Meanwhile we have Penelope being all adorable and happy and congratulating you knowing that you're going to be slut-shamed, humiliated and dragged out of court for a scandal she helped generate. Kiara on the other hand was honest. She wanted a job in the ministry and a bomb married life while she was at it. I'd rather have an ambitious (but won't abuse her power like Madeleine does) Kiara in my corner than a person who lies to my face about supporting me, does little more to help than just tell me who her boss was, then expects me to call her my best friend later.

Kiara had to only look at and flirt with Drake for people to hate on her. Meanwhile Olivia could spring an unwanted kiss on Liam in public, and the fandom would still be blaming Liam for not loving her back. In regular fandom content Kiara was mocked and sometimes suspected of having an illicit affair with Drake, in fanfic that featured her she was often either villainized, or written as the "other woman". Which is okay - fanfic is your own personal sandbox, after all - but it does highlight a pattern.

In canon...Kiara was made a survivor of a terrorist attack and nobody cared. Not the MC, not the country's king, not her closest friends, not the man who got injured at the same ball. It was bad enough that her parents were considering leaving the goddamn country (they should have). She was ignored in her own estate. The MC speaks to her not with sympathy and reassurances, but instead reminds her of her 'duty' and pressurizes her. (@callmetippytumbles illustrates this amazingly in her ask here, having Liam say "have a apple and buck up for Cordonia". No lie there. No lie there at all). All the 'sympathy' goes to a brother who has absolutely nothing to do with court.

She was suspected and interrogated at Lythikos. The MC has the option to be dismissive and to minimize - by labelling her "not as driven" - as Kiara literally pours her heart out about her trauma. Sample this:

(Ngl folks. Reading this was really, really triggering for me. I know exactly what it feels like to have my trauma dismissed like this. It doesn't feel great. Fuck you MC. Fuck you Drake. Fuck you TRR writers)

There are no consequences for doing this to her, btw. She still returns and she still fights at the boutique and she'll still speak very positively about you to her mother. I imagine if Joelle found out the truth of how the group really treated her daughter, she'd verbally destroy them and never support the kingdom again. And she'd be right not to.

On its own that scenario looks bad enough already, but when you hold it up next to how we treat the other ladies? Pure, stinking trash:

Madeleine: A diamond scene to console and encourage her, and all the right options are meant to support her to her parents. If you don't succeed in making her parents understand what she wants, you lose out on their support. There are consequences.

Penelope: A diamond scene to comfort and reassure her that they will not be like Madeleine. Immense coddling from the group. If you don't call her your best friend or altogether be nice and supportive to her, that negatively impacts the way Landon responds to you. AND I have heard that if her parents don't believe Penelope is safe with you, she doesn't even join the tour. There are consequences.

Kiara: No diamond scenes to even figure out how she is or what she thinks. A one-minute scene to convince (emotionally blackmail, actually) her to "do your duty", which will happen no matter which option, then a diamond option for her brother...who exists only because they want to give Penelope a reward for something I still cannot fathom. Her brother's response depends on his own issues and the presence of Penelope, and Hakim and Joelle's depend on what you do at the Festival. Kiara's situation of being an attack victim should have warranted the kind of coddling Penelope felt entitled to, yet when it comes right down to it her plight matters to literally no one.

In Lythikos no special diamond scenes for her either, just an interrogation. While we can choose to view Kiara as innocent in Chapter 11, her leaving is branded "suspicious" by both Drake and the MC by default the next chapter, and Maxwell literally says (disappointment writ large on his face) "jeez, that's one suspect off our list" after we're done. We go to her pretending to be her well-wishers, but in reality we're interrogating a traumatized woman, and not even ashamed when she trusts our untrustworthy asses with her secret.

You get the option to forget what happened to her (for which she rightfully slams you). You get the option to be a trauma-minimizing pile of steaming fecal matter (for which she doesn't slam you, even though she should). No matter what, Drake is your puppet and will agree with you, and you get away with all this. Drake stands there and minimizes her experiences with you, and shows zero remorse for putting an attack victim in that situation.

Like, it's actually quite shameful the more you think about it. Kiara was interrogated. After two traumatic experiences that at the very least should have her questioning whether we are worth her support at all. In a scenario that any fool would realise was at least scary to her if not altogether traumatizing. Madeleine and Penelope feel entitled to good treatment, Kiara has to make do with the crumbs we throw at her. She is never given a chance to speak of this as problematic, and the group never gets truly called out on their bullshit.

Even if you do pick the absolute nicest options...the fact remains that the MC, Duchess of Valtoria (and possible future Queen) and her group of influential friends, ignored the concerns a person who was badly injured at their event, pressurized her into showing support for them, didn't do jackshit to ensure her safety, suspected and questioned her when she rightfully withdrew public support, and dishonestly interrogated this traumatized woman, while still keeping the expectation that she support them. All without earning a shred of that support. They felt zero remorse, every last one of them, for putting her in that position.

Kiara not getting much attention isn't exactly a surprise. She has always been given the least focus among the ladies of the court and Book 3 wouldn't have been an exception...if they hadn't made her a victim of a terrorist attack!! Once they placed Kiara in that position, she deserved to have her concerns addressed, and addressed properly. What happened to her was a highlight of the failure of the security system at the palace and Royal Court, and to have that ignored while we had all the time in the world to address Madeleine's parents' petty family squabbles was disgusting. That there are absolutely no consequences for doing this to Kiara, while there are for not attending to Penelope or Madeleine's concerns, and it all ends with Kiara praising us to her mother, is disgusting. That the writers were more busy trying to backtrack on Driara and make the ship impossible to happen in canon, than on focusing on Kiara's own story in her own estate, is disgusting. And I cannot ignore that the latter decision sprung in a large part from the hate the fandom was spewing on Kiara for most of Book 2. The writers wouldn't have dared to do such a thing to Penelope, and it was clearly because there would be a backlash. They knew they could get away with insensitive writing for Kiara easier than they would with Penelope - and they did.

The other thing is this. Back in Books 2 and 3, loads of people in the fandom used to aggressively ship Liam and Olivia (to the point where he would be blamed for not returning her affections). Loads of people would also find excuses to hate on Kiara once she began to show she liked Drake. Nowadays, it's popular to state that "Olivia deserves better" (I'd be inclined to agree if it weren't for the way that argument is often framed. She deserves a man who loves her completely) - again, in a way that blames Liam for not returning her affections.

Yet, when people speak of Kiara's feelings being one-sided? Little to no blame for Drake there, even though he was rude or dismissive to her more than once (for me, personally, Lythikos was the last straw). Hardly a handful would say "Kiara deserves better than Drake". I can bet if Liam treated Olivia even half as poorly as Drake behaved with Kiara, we'd be bashing that man to the high heavens. I guess it's because it's Kiara who is the recipient of this kind of treatment that it matters to so few. I shouldn't be surprised.

26. Most shippable character?

Hayden xD Mostly because they're so much fun to customize, yet there's a very strong inner core there that does not change and that grounds the character.

27. Least shippable character?

I don't know. Nana?

[arofili]

Innumerable Stars 2021 Letter

Hello lovely creator, thanks for writing for me in Innumerable Stars 2020! I’m very excited and grateful for whatever you create for me <3

This letter will restate my DNWs, list my likes, give you a brief rundown of my canon preferences, and then dive into specific prompts for each of my requests. I’ll warn you upfront that I tend to ramble, so feel free to skip prompts that don’t interest you and/or use ctrl+F to search for whatever it is you want to write for. I’ve named each of my requests based on the basic idea within it, so hopefully that will be helpful for you!

~

Housekeeping

DNWs:

non-con/dub-con

ABO (heat fic is fine)

food involved in sex

abusive/neglectful parenting (especially not with Fëanor; Eöl is the only exception, but even then don’t dwell on it)

sibling incest and parent-child incest (cousin incest is fine)

unhappy/unhopeful endings (unless requested)

jealousy

possessiveness EXCEPT with Russingon, for some reason I love it with those two

cheating

character or ship bashing

hanahaki or any scenario where unrequited love is physically damaging

soulmates, especially soulmate AUs BUT soul bonds are excellent as long as there is an element of choice involved

unrequested modern AU

non-trans mpreg

if you are writing a slash ship where the characters are/were married to/involved with someone outside of the ship in canon, please don’t have the character(s) hate their spouse or not have been actually in love with them. The only exception to this is Finrod; I’m fine with him and Amárië not having been actually in love, but don’t do this for anyone else, especially not Fëanor.

Hobbit/LOTR-specific DNWs:

the concept of a dwarven “One”

any Fíli pairing, even in reference

Alfrid

Legolas or Gimli paired with anyone other than each other

mortals dying super quickly in Valinor

unrequested smut

Silm-specific DNWs:

evil/irredeemable/incel Maeglin

Elwing bashing

Fëanorian bashing

over-the-top Fëanorian apologism (they did bad stuff; it was at least partially their fault. you don’t have to address that, necessarily, but don’t rewrite the story to claim they were blameless)

Fingon with a wife

Fingon or Maedhros ships that don’t take Russingon into account (polyamory, an open relationship, Mae with someone after Finno dies or vice versa for an AU, them with other people while they’re separated on the Ice/in Angband - all of these scenarios are fine, but in the end I need them to be with each other first and foremost)

dark!Maedhros

elvish re-embodiment after death being an actual, literal rebirth that requires the characters to have a second childhood; I much prefer them being granted a new hröa in their prime (feel free to explore what “in their prime” means, though, especially wrt scarred and disabled elves)

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Likes:

queer headcanons, especially aromantic-spectrum headcanons & trans/nonbinary headcanons

trans/nonbinary pregnancy and parenthood

found family

queerplatonic relationships

kidfic

angst with a happy ending

gray morality

explorations of magic

most tropes

fanon and fandom tropes

deconstruction/inversion of fanon and fandom tropes

secret relationships

secret kids (especially secret peredhil)

giving ships OC kids

confessions of love

first times

hurt/comfort

redemption, forgiveness, mercy

ironic foreshadowing

canon divergence AUs and X Lives AUs

fairy tale AUs

politics and scheming

resolving conflicting canonical details

names fitting the time period (Quenya names in Valinor, please; if this is difficult for you, that’s okay, no pressure, but I do strongly prefer it)

choice of character names having a lot of thought put behind them (does the character go back to their original Quenya name upon rebirth? or do they keep their Sindarin name? or come up with something else entirely? do they hate their new Sindarin name and resent having to use it, or do they embrace it? As long as you put some thought into it, I’m sure I’ll like whatever you decide!)

author’s notes where you explain your thought process, if you want; I love hearing how the story took shape!

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Preferences re: canon:

LaCE compliance is always completely optional. If you do want to include it, that’s great, but if you just want the characters to fuck without having that be an issue, go for it. I love explorations of LaCE that take into account the exceptions, boundaries, definitions, etc; I also love takes that emphasize that they are Laws and Customs, not biological imperatives.

I’m not picky about my Amrod deaths. He can die at either Losgar or Sirion (or, hell, some other time/place if you make it interesting enough!), whatever works best for the story. I do like Lightly Toasted Amrod, aka he almost burns to death at Losgar but survives/gets rescued at the last minute.

Gil-galad theories are all very fun. Please don’t make him the son of Fingon and a wife; if he’s Fingon’s son, I want Maedhros to be involved at least a little bit (adoption or trans mpreg are both fine in this scenario). Otherwise, I don’t have a particular preference, though if it’s not really relevant I usually default to the son of Orodreth (who is in turn the son of Angrod).

Honestly, when it comes to theories and headcanons, my rule of thumb is “convince me”! I’m down for whatever, for the most part, as long as you can justify it :)

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LOTR Books Request

Gigolas tags: Gimli, Legolas, Group: Gimli & Legolas, Group: Gimli/Legolas, Group: Gimli/Legolas & Glóin, Group: Gimli/Legolas & Thranduil, Group: Legolas & Aragorn & Gimli, Group: Glóin & Thranduil, Original Dwarf of Aglarond, Original Elf of Ithilien Suggested worldbuilding tags: Battle of Dale, Differences in Elvish & Dwarvish Histories, Fall of Dol Guldur, Interspecies Relationships, Queerplatonic Relationships, Rebuilding of Ithilien

All Gigolas is good Gigolas, and you can quote me on that - but I do have a soft spot for queerplatonic Gigolas, and I might die of happiness if you wrote me some :) I love elf/dwarf relationships, and cultural differences leading to miscommunication is one of my favorite tropes for this ship.

For the “& Thranduil” and “& Glóin” I’d love to see some “telling the family” scenarios, with Thranduil and Glóin coming to terms with their sons’ relationship. For “& Aragorn” I was imagining a Three (or Four, if you want to keep Boromir alive!) Hunters situation with Aragorn third wheeling them (and/or commiserating with Boromir about how terrible their friends are at expressing their feelings).

I’m very interested in Legolas and Gimli’s new homes post-War, how much time they spent visiting each other and how much time they spent apart, etc. I would love to see an outside POV of Gigolas, what their friends and subordinates think of this odd couple; perhaps an elf of Ithilien and a dwarf of Aglarond strike up a friendship and gossip about their lords! I’d also be interested in Gimli and Legolas visiting their original homes, meeting one another’s parents, and helping rebuild after the Battle of Dale / Fall of Dol Guldur.

I would also love to see an exploration of dwarf/elf relationships and the difficulties that would arise from that. Legolas’ father is a Sinda of Doriath who remembers the Battle of the Thousand Caves, and I headcanon that Gimli’s mother is descended from the dwarves of Nogrod who were involved in that debacle, so them coming to terms with that difficult history (and how that history differs) between their peoples would be really interesting.

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Gildor Inglorion

...okay, so this is technically a Silm request dressed up as a LOTR request, but I would really love to see an exploration of Gildor’s origins! I have a few concepts for how he can be  “of the House of Finarfin,” mostly relating to this Inglor figure who is his father. I think Inglor was either the son of Finrod and trans!Bëor (and thus the first peredhel) or the son of Aegnor and Andreth; either way, he was raised mostly by Finrod. But who is Inglor’s spouse/Gildor’s other parent? (Edrahil, maybe?) How did Gildor survive the Fall of Nargothrond, or was he born afterwards? Where did he live in the Third Age? Who was awaiting him when he arrived in Aman?

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Took Fairy Wife

I think this concept is fascinating, and I’d love to hear the story of a hobbit/elf romance! Perhaps Pippin or Frodo tell this story to the Fellowship? I also have the headcanon that since Durin I “woke alone,” his spouse was also an elf, so maybe Gimli could throw in that legend as well.

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Group: Last Prince of Cardolan/Lady of the Blue Brooch Suggested worldbuilding tags: Barrow-downs and Barrow-wights, Necromancy and Hauntings, Sentient Weapons & Jewelry

I’ve recently become a little bit obsessed with the concept of the Last Prince and the Lady of the Blue Brooch being star-crossed lovers. We have conflicting accounts of the Last Prince’s demise, and I’d love to see those reconciled into one story; we also know that the Prince was buried in the barrow-downs, where the Lady’s blue brooch was found. How did that end up there - was it a token she gave to him before his death? Did she visit his grave after it was too late? How did Tom and Goldberry know her? Maybe they are the ones to tell this story to some hobbitish traveler through the Old Forest... I do have my own version of this story, if you’d like to borrow some ideas from there, but feel free to make up your own thing too!

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Group: Eldarion/Elboron

I just think they’re cute :) I like the idea that Eldarion’s heir is not his own child, but the child of one of his sisters, and that Elboron had a sister who was the parent of Barahir of Ithilien, so these two can be gay together. Of course, you could also make one of them trans and have Eldarion’s heir and Barahir be siblings! Or you can explore the beginnings of their relationship - just a cute get-together story would be wonderful.

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Worldbuilding: Arwen reforged Narsil

This is such a neat concept - I would love to see Fëanorian Arwen (bc Kidnap Dads) going full smith mode and personally reforging Narsil into Andúril for her boyfriend. Arwen embracing her dual kinship as both the descendant of Lúthien and the descendant of Maedhros and Maglor would be amazing (especially if Maglor is hanging around in Rivendell). Bonus points if Narsil used to be Maedhros’ sword, and that’s how it got passed down to Elros!

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Hobbit Movies Request

Kiliel tags: Fíli, Kíli, Tauriel, Group: Fíli & Kíli, Group: Kíli/Tauriel, Group: Kíli/Tauriel & Fíli Suggested worldbuilding tags: Almost Everyone Lives AU, Kíli's Runestone, Worldbuilding: Tauriel goes to Erebor AU

I’m a basic bitch when it comes to Kiliel stuff: give me fluff, give me angst with a mostly-happy ending, give me Fíli being exasperated by his brother’s romantic drama! I would be interested in an AU where Thorin dies but Fíli and Kíli survive, and King Fíli has to deal with Kíli’s love life causing political problems; I’d also love to see an AU where Tauriel goes to Erebor with Kíli, Fíli, Bofur, and Óin after the lakeshore scene. And anything surrounding the magic of Kíli’s runestone would be very welcome - perhaps it really was cursed/enchanted, and by giving it to Tauriel, Kíli lost the protection Dís had placed upon him and passed it to her. What if Tauriel had returned it before the end - would Kíli have lived, and she died? Or, in a canon scenario (in this case, full angst is welcome) what if Tauriel and Dís met and talked about the stone and its properties?

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Hilda Bianca

I just think she’s neat. I’d love to see her getting involved in the politics of a rebuilt Dale, either collaborating with or causing problems for Bard. Her being a mentor figure for Sigrid and Tilda would also be great.

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Book of Lost Tales Request

Group: Ómar & Salmar

Ómar Amillo and Salmar Lirillo were brothers in early stages of the Legendarium - I would love to see that explored in a more Slim-compliant verse, where they are both Maiar. Ómar could be a Maia of Ulmo, like Salmar is, or a Maia of some other Vala. Music and water are intrinsically connected in Arda’s makeup, so Ómar as a being of song and Salmar as a being of water would be really cool to see explored somehow!

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Meril-i-Turinqi

Another really neat character!! I headcanon that she is the child of a grandson of Olwë and a granddaughter of Ingwë. How did she rise to power on Tol Eressëa? What are her relationships with her great-grandfathers? Is she friends with other influential elf-women - perhaps Elenwë or Amárië or Galadriel?

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Silm Requests Russingon Request

Russingon tags: Maedhros, Fingon, Group: Fingon/Maedhros, Original Character from Himring, Group: Fingon/Finrod/Maedhros Suggested worldbuilding tags: Elven Gender Constructs, Hair and customs/kinks around it, LaCE as a social construct, Melotorni & Meletheldi, Onnalúmë

Russingon is my OTP, I just love them a lot!! I adore both plot-heavy explorations of their characters and relationship and more slice-of-life fluff/angst/porn stuff without any particular story behind it. If I need comfort fic this pairing is my go-to, and I’d love to have more of that to come back to. PWP would be welcome; plot is also excellent and I’m sure to enjoy that too. I’m always a sucker for falling in love / confessions of love / first times, but ESPECIALLY for Russingon; the beginning of their love story is something I’ll never get tired of. Established relationship, reunions (after the Ice/Angband or after time spent apart in Hithlum/Himring or after leaving the Halls or another scenario) are also amazing. The secret relationship aspect of this ship is very fun, both keeping things secret and having their secret come to light. If you wanted to invert that trope, though, I would definitely enjoy that; something like a fake dating AU or an arranged marriage AU or a situation where they get pregnant and have to tell people. It would also be great to see them trying (and failing) to keep their relationship a secret while they are in Beleriand - outsider POV from a resident of Himring would be great here! I like scenarios where they’re married, and I like scenarios where they’re not married, whichever floats your boat will be excellent. Honestly, I’m likely to enjoy almost any Russingon content you write; I just… *clenches fist* love them… If you wanted to explore a queerplatonic interpretation of them that would be really cool, but I do love love love romantic/sexual Russingon and would be overjoyed to have any content about them! In my DNW I mentioned that I don’t like the concept of soulmates (for Aro Reasons) so please steer clear of that, but having Mae and Finno choose each other over and over again and that affecting their soul bond/mental connection might just bring me to tears ;-;

I adore Fingon on his own - he’s brave and valiant and good-hearted and deserved better ;-; If you wanted to write a Fingon-focused story that touches on his time as a prince or a king or adjusting to re-embodied life in Valinor or his relationships with people other than Maedhros, I am sure to love that.

Maedhros is probably my favorite character in the Silm. I love his character arc, the fire symbolism, his trauma and recovery, his relationship with his brothers and his cousins, his time helping Maglor care for Elrond and Elros - really all of his story. For this exchange I’d rather not receive a fic focused on his time in Angband or his death; I can enjoy fics about that, but I’m looking for something a bit happier here. Art of Maedhros in those situations would be okay.

When it comes to throwing Finrod into the mix with Russingon, what I’m really looking for is some smut, tbh. Maedhros and Fingon are ridiculously in love, and Finrod is a bit of a hoe, and I can’t believe there wasn’t at least one time they had a threesome. Finrod getting fucked by both of them at once would be excellent. Finrod is canonically friendly with the Fëanorians in Beleriand and goes hunting with Maglor and Maedhros, maybe this is a time where it’s Fingon instead of Maglor and they fuck in the woods, or Maedhros and Fingon visit Nargothrond, or Maedhros and Finrod visit Barad Eithel, or Fingon and Finrod visit Himring. Is this a planned encounter? Something spontaneous? Is Finrod seducing them both, or are they inviting him in? Did Maedhros and Finrod have a fling in Valinor, or did Finrod and Fingon find comfort together on the Ice, or both? I’d love to see where you take this!

When it comes to the worldbuilding tags, I’d love to see an exploration of gender and sexuality in relation to Russingon. I adore trans depictions of both Maedhros and Fingon, so that would be extremely welcome - you can also explore how elvish gender concepts differ from our understanding of gender and transness (I mused about that a bit in this post, along with thoughts on elvish naming traditions, if you’re looking for inspiration). LaCE is such a tricky topic, and I would definitely be interested in Mae and Finno experimenting sexually and discovering what is and isn’t biological about those concepts, and what is actually a cultural construct the elves have adhered to over time. Hair customs (what braids mean, hair coverings, etc) are really interesting - and a GREAT opportunity to include some hair kink! I mean, Finno has those gold braids and Mae’s name “Russandol” refers to his hair, I bet they are into each other’s hair.

Regarding the concept of melotorni, I can easily see that as either gay-coding or queerplatonic love; I’d love to see either or both those options explored with Russingon. (As for meletheldi, I mean, if you wanted to make them girls I would be super down for that too. I’m okay with genderbending, though I do prefer trans/nb headcanons, and I definitely don’t want them genderbent to be “straight.”) And as for Onnalúmë - well, that’s just heat fic, isn’t it? ;)

The bottom line for Russingon is that I Love Them and they love each other, and for this request I’d love PWP, fluff, hurt/comfort, falling in love, getting together, reunion, established relationship - really almost anything with them would absolutely make my day!

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Russingon & kids tags: Gil-galad, Erien, Group: Erien & Gil-galad, Group: Fingon/Maedhros & Erien, Group: Fingon/Maedhros & Erien & Gil-galad, Group: Fingon/Maedhros & Gil-galad, Group: Erien & Faniel Suggested worldbuilding tags: Elven Naming Traditions, improbable parentages for Gil-Galad

The only thing I love more than Russingon is Russingon with KIDS!! I’m a sucker for Russingon as the fathers of Gil-galad, and recently I’ve decided to adopt Erien, a discarded daughter of Fingon, into my personal canon as a Russingon daughter. Exploring either Gil or Erien’s relationship with their dads would be wonderful - and, if they exist in the same universe, their relationship with each other!! (I recently wrote a novel-length fic about Erien being Tauriel, if you’d like to borrow some concepts from there, but that’s certainly not my “usual” interpretation of either of them so feel free to make up your own Erien origin story too!) I was very excited to see that someone else nominated an Erien relationship - Erien and Faniel is a great concept! I usually headcanon Faniel as the daughter of Findis and Elemmírë and the younger sister of Glorfindel, but if you have a different origin story for her that would be really neat as well. Discarded Finwëan daughters ftw! Russingon having kids would be a great place to explore elven naming traditions, how gay elves would name their kids (two father-names??), and maybe the Fëanorian tradition of -finwë names :p I definitely selected the “improbable parentages for Gil-galad” with trans!Russingon in mind, but if you’ve got another situation (that one fic where Finrod, Fingon, and Maedhros do Weird Science with a Maia comes to mind...), be my guest.

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Kidnap Dads tags: Elrond, Group: Elrond & Elros, Group: Elrond & Gil-galad, Group: Maglor & Maedhros & Elrond & Elros Suggested worldbuilding tags: Choice of the Peredhil

I threw in Kidnap Dads into this request as well :) I firmly believe this relationship was, in the end, mostly a positive one despite the rocky beginning - I don’t want to see E&E hating M&M, and I also don’t want to see them resenting their birth parents either (however, their bio parents interacting with their foster parents in awkward/humorous situations would be great). Fluff would be wonderful, but some post-WoW angst would be welcome as well. Elrond and Gil-galad Russingonion considering each other brothers because of their shared father Maedhros is a favorite headcanon of mine! I really would love to see a focus on Maedhros and the E twins; Maglor can of course be involved, but I’m more interested in Maedhros as a character.

Some possible scenarios: an official adoption ceremony, cultural differences, M&M giving E&E some more names / teaching them Quenya, sharing traditions, Maedhros teaching the twins some skill (cooking? swordfighting? embroidery?), the twins being Weird (either because they’re part human or part Maia) and M&M learning to deal with that, Elrond reuniting with Maedhros in Valinor, Elrond getting adopted by M&M’s spouses (Maglor’s spouse and/or Fingon), AU where Maedhros lives and is around for E&E’s later lives

Exploring the Choice of the Peredhil would also be great. How did being raised with M&M affect E&E’s decisions when it came to their Choices of kindred? Were there any Men in the remnants of the Fëanorian host, and did that affect their Choices? 

And since this is technically under the umbrella of the Russingon request, of course Maedhros telling E&E about his husband would be amazing. (And quite probably heartbreaking, too...)

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Maeglin Request

Reminder that I am not at all interested in irredeemable/evil Maeglin; I am a known Maeglin sympathizer and I will not apologize for that.

Maeglin & Fëanorians tags: Maeglin, Group: Dwarves & Maeglin, Group: Caranthir & Dwarves & Maeglin, Group: Maeglin & Fëanorians Suggested worldbuilding tags: Cross-Species Mentorships, Differences between Dwarf craft and Elf craft, Elven magic and art and technology, Maeglin Adopted by Fëanorians AU

I would adore an AU where Maeglin is adopted by the Fëanorians!! Maybe Maeglin escapes to Himring instead of Gondolin after his capture, and Maedhros helps him deal with Angband trauma? (I know that doesn’t really make sense timeline wise, you figure out the details, lmao. Maybe it’s actually taking place in Ossiriand, idk, or the timelines get moved around.) Otherwise, I’d love to see a younger Maeglin interacting with the Three Cs and dwarves!! A focus on craft and smithing would be wonderful, in that scenario.

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Maeglin in Gondolin tags: Turgon, Group: Anairë & Maeglin, Group: Fingolfin & Maeglin, Group: Eärendil & Maeglin, Group: Idril & Maeglin, Group: Idril/Maeglin/Tuor, Group: Maeglin & Rôg Suggested worldbuilding tags: Metal Dragons

I think Maeglin’s relationship with emotionally repressed Turgon was difficult because of miscommunication, but they did love and care for one another. A version of events where Idril and Maeglin were friends before she found out about his feelings for her, or where they can work through that, would be really interesting to read. I love the idea of Maeglin begrudgingly coming to love Eärendil even though he’s Tuor’s child; I think that Eärendil’s mithril coat was made by Maeglin as a precaution against himself and the curse Morgoth placed upon him (I also think this is the origin of Bilbo’s mithril coat). Rôg is usually depicted as an Angband escapee; him noticing something wrong with Maeglin and figuring out about his capture would be a great story. Idril/Maeglin/Tuor is a great concept, especially Maeglin being upset about Idril and Tuor’s marriage because he’s in love with both of them - a threesome where finally gets what he wants (and some consensual rough treatment??) would be excellent. Also, some post-reembodiment fic where Maeglin gets to meet his grandparents would be amazing!! As for the metal dragons, some focus on Maeglin’s craft combined with the magics of Sauron and Morgoth would be really interesting. I would prefer if it Maeglin’s time in Angband was Pretty Bad (though I’d rather not have torture depicted on the page), and show him struggling with the excitement of being able to bring these incredible creations to life versus the knowledge that Sauron and Morogth can and will abuse him to get what they want. I’m not particularly interested in a sympathetic portrayal of Sauron and Morgoth.

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Maeglin, Túrin, and Tyelpë tags: Túrin, Group: Celebrimbor/Maeglin, Group: Turin & Anglachel, Group: Maeglin & Anguirel, Group: Maeglin/Túrin Suggested worldbuilding tags: Bedazzling as a love language, Celebrimbor forging Gurthang, Sentient Weapons & Jewelry

OKAY so Maeglin/Turin is my rarepair OTP and I would absolutely die of happiness if you wrote this ship! For this request I’m envisioning a scenario where Maeglin goes to Nargothrond and that’s where he encounters Túrin. I’m also interested in Maeglin/Tyelpe, so throwing him into the mix would be fabulous. One of my favorite aspects of this ship is Maeglin and Túrin’s connections to Anguirel and Anglachel, so having them bond over that (maybe a literal bond...like a soul bond or something???? enforced by the semi-sentient swords??) would be excellent. I definitely believe Celebrimbor was the one to reforge Anglachel into Gurthang, so that could be a way of getting him involved. (Him ~bedazzling~ the sword as a way of flirting with Túrin would be hilarious; or just smiths bedazzling their creations to impress each other in general, lmao.) It’s also quite likely that in this scenario that Maeglin arrived in Nargothrond with Celegorm, Curufin, and Celebrimbor (and possibly Aredhel, though I was kind of envisioning her as dead in this scenario, RIP - or otherwise not present, much like how C&C have been banished by the time Túrin shows up), so he would have a preexisting relationship with Tyelpë. Maybe they broke up? Maybe they’re awkwardly pining and Túrin is what brings them together? Or some other situation. This ship is doomed no matter how you twist it, and so digging into the dramatic irony of it all would be delicious; happy endings are optional for this request.

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Maeglin & Aredhel in Himlad & Nargothrond tags: Aredhel, Group: Aredhel & Oromë, Group: Celegorm/Aredhel & Maeglin & Curufin & Celebrimbor, Group: Curufin/Finrod & Celebrimbor Suggested worldbuilding tags: Aredhel and Maeglin Remain in Himlad, Aromantic Aredhel

This is kind of similar to the previous request, but with a focus on Aredhel, Celegorm, and Curufin as well as Maeglin and Celebrimbor. I would love an AU where Maeglin and Aredhel go to Himlad instead of Gondolin, and eventually end up in Nargothrond - I really can’t get enough of this concept! What happens with Eöl; does Curufin actually kinslay him this time? How do Maeglin and Tyelpë get along? My Aredhel is always aromantic, but I do ship her and Celegorm as FWB (though maybe Celegorm’s caught feelings somewhere along the line...) - how does Maeglin feel about her rekindling that relationship? I’d definitely be interested in a story about Celebrimbor being a Curufinrod baby (trans!Curvo ftw), so that would make returning to Nargothrond extra tense and emotional. As for Aredhel and Oromë, I have this headcanon that Anairë gave all her children Valar-related mother-names, and that Aredhel was named Írissë Aldarindë after Oromë Aldaron. How does she feel about that name and her connection to Oromë? I don’t think she ever actually joined his Hunt like Celegorm did; why is that? Did Celegorm discourage because he’d adopted his father’s anti-Valar sentiment and left the Hunt? Did she just get involved too late, and then the Darkening happened? How do her and Celegorm’s relationships with their patron Vala differ in Beleriand? I think they were both Kinslayers at Alqualondë, but Celegorm is bound by the Oath and Aredhel isn’t - how does that affect things? Can Aredhel and Maeglin’s presence change how Finrod’s demise goes down? All sorts of fascinating things you could explore!

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Misc. Silm Request

Cuiviénen tags: Original Awakened Elf of Cuiviénen (Silm) Suggested worldbuilding tags: In-universe Origins of LaCE, LaCE as a Horror Concept, LaCE as a social construct, LaCE-compliant soulbonding, Non-romantic/sexual Soul Bonds

I’d love to see an exploration of how LaCE came to be, which parts of the rules around marriage and children and re-embodiment are social constructs and which are innate to the fëa and hröa, and/or relationships that defy the norms. If your take on the laws is hetero/cisnormative, how does that affect queer elves? If your take is free of bigotry, what are the flexibilities around queerness, including asexuality and aromanticism? Laws and customs and rules always have loopholes and exceptions, so what do elves who don’t fit into the expected relationship mold do about these norms?

How do soul bonds work on a metaphysical level? Can they be broken? Do they have to be nurtured and maintained? What’s long-distance communication like? Heck, what’s short-distance communication like, is it like talking in your mind or sharing your feelings or more abstract than that? Can elves form soul bonds with mortals? And most importantly—how did elves figure out they could soul bond with one another?? I can imagine that would be quite a shock when they’re discovering sex and then suddenly they’re inside each other’s minds! This could easily be tied into the “LaCE as Horror” tag; especially if the characters were not expecting it or the bond was being abused. (If you do decide to explore abuse, I would prefer you use OCs rather than canon characters, unless you want to write Eöl abusing Aredhel or Sauron abusing Celebrimbor. In any case, please be careful with that kind of relationship, I am quite sensitive to abuse in fiction even if I am interested in this subject.)

For non-romantic and/or non-sexual soul bonds: Explore sibling bonds, twin bonds, parent-child bonds, queerplatonic bonds, found family bonds, adoption bonds, the bond between a Vala and their Maia…any kind of soul bond that is familial or platonic or chosen without regard to romance! (Feel free to take a canon romantic relationship and turn it queerplatonic, I live for that shit!) How are these bonds formed outside of sex? What are the rituals and ceremonies around forming them? Is it a public or private thing? Are non-romantic soul bonds taken seriously, or are they seen as less important than marriage bonds? Since elven parents literally give part of their soul in the creation of the child, is that parent-child bond innate? What are traditions around elven adoption? Are there soul bonds created between the adoptive parents and children? Was adoption even a thing in Aman, or is it only practiced in Middle-earth? Did elves adopt mortals and vice versa? Is adoption extended to found family other than a parent-child situation? How is adoption viewed by elvish society, especially if inheritance/succession is a concern?

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Turgoldo tags: Group: Finrod/Turgon, Group: Mariners send by Turgon to Aman Suggested worldbuilding tags: Songs of Power

This is my rarepair to end all rarepairs tbh. I honestly don’t know why these two are not shipped more! I am desperate for any and all content with them, I am not picky at all, I just love them.

Fun times in Aman before things get dark and serious would be lovely, I think in that context their relationship would be more casual (or at least they’re trying to make it casual and that leads to hurt feelings). I’d rather not focus on their relationships with their canon love interests, mostly because I’m not a fan of stories about jealousy (also because I see both Finrod and Amarië as gay and together mostly for convenience’s sake AND/OR they’re in a queerplatonic relationship, not a romantic/sexual one), but I do ship Elenwë/Amarië so those two having some sort of polyamorous arrangement with Finrod and Turgon could be fun. But feel free to just ignore any of that and depict Finrod and Turgon together without their respective ladies!

If you go into Beleriand times, I like: Turgon grieving Elenwë and finding solace with Finrod; whatever went down that night by the river they never wanted to talk about again; helping each other build their hidden kingdoms; Finrod sneaking into Gondolin maybe??; repressed Turgon being angsty about discovering his bisexuality and Finrod either helping him or making things more complicated; Finrod missing Turgon and trying to distract himself in Nargothrond (maybe in combination with another Finrod ship? honestly I ship Finrod with any dude that moves, feel free to put your own spin on his relationships, though I would prefer a focus on Turgon/Finrod for this request). Post-reembodiment scenarios would also be great.

Or maybe you want to do an AU with them! Supernatural creatures? Some other fantasy setting? A space opera? Honestly the only AU I wouldn’t be interested in is a modern AU, I’m very picky with my Silm Modern AUs. Honestly like I said earlier, I would love ANY content with Finrod and Turgon, you’d make me very happy if you depicted them together!! Feel free to ignore any of the stuff I said if you’ve got a better idea!!

Regarding the mariners sent to Aman: maybe Turgon is trying to pass a message along to a re-embodied Finrod along with the general cry for help to the Valar? And for “Songs of Power” I was thinking about Finrod’s rap battle with Sauron, and if there was any precedent for him being musically/magically powerful before then that Turgon could have witnessed.

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Misc. worldbuilding tags: HoME/UT backstories and events that contradict the Silm, Dragons hunted for their leather, Ossiriand and the Laiquendi

I love incorporating other drafts of stories into the “main” version of the Silm! Please feel free to tweak early concepts to fit the later Legendarium, and definitely explain yourself in the author’s notes, I love that shit.

I can totally see dragons or adventurous Avari hunting dragons for their hides. You could also maybe explore this with the corpse of Smaug in the Long Lake; dwarves harvesting scales as a precious resource, or something?

In writing my recent Tauriel longfic I came to love the Laiquendi of Ossiriand. I’d love to see a nuanced exploration of their cultures - who were their leaders after Denethor? Were they really all nonviolent, or did some fight in self-defense or choose to join the Union of Maedhros? What was their relationship with the Fëanorians, both before and after the Nírnaeth? Do they consider themselves Avari? Do other elves consider them Avari?

~~~

Númenor Request

Early Númenor tags: Group: Elros/Elros's Wife (Silm)

Idk, I just think they’re cute. I have an OC for Elros’ wife that I love, and it would be awesome if you wrote something with her! Or you can use your own OC, whatever you’d like :)

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Late Númenor tags: Group: Amandil & Ar-Pharazon & Tar-Míriel, Group: Inzilbêth & Tar-Míriel, Group: Míriel & Tar-Míriel, Group: Elwing & Tar-Míriel Suggested worldbuilding tags: Númenórean Settlements in Middle-earth, Peredhil Heritage in Numenor’s art & culture (Silm)

Amandil, Pharazôn, and Míriel’s childhood friendship is really interesting to me (especially if you throw in Elentír as well!). Would love to see how that dynamic changes over time, Pharazôn’s time conquering in Middle-earth, and their varying opinions about their heritage as the descendants of peredhil. I’m not really interested in portrayals of Pharazôn and Míriel’s relationship as healthy or even consensual; I’d rather you didn’t dwell too much on the abusive aspect, but even when I incorporate the story of Elentír I like to preserve the narrative present in the Silm where Pharazôn takes Míriel to wife against her will.

I never really thought much about Inzilbêth and Míriel, but now I definitely am! How does Míriel feel about her faithful grandmother? I see Míriel as not particularly faithful in the Valar, not like her father, but more politically against the King’s Men; does Inzilbêth try to instill faith into her granddaughter like she did her son?

I’m not sure how Míriel Þerindë or Elwing would interact with Tar-Míriel (perhaps Míriel Þerindë weaves her story? or they meet in Mandos before Tar-Míriel leaves to receive the Gift of Men? - maybe Elwing watches over her descendants from Eärendil’s ship, or flies to visit Númenor before its fall?) but I’m now interested in how that might happen, and what kinds of advice they would pass on to her. Also, if you go with Tar-Míriel and Míriel Þerindë, I’d love to see a silver-haired Tar-Míriel to mirror Þerindë! (also, “fairer than silver or ivory or pearls” makes a great image for a silver-haired Tar-Míriel)

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Tar-Silmariën AU tags: Worldbuilding: Silmariën Becomes Queen of Númenor AU

GOSH everything would have been SO different if she had been able to rule! Would her descendants have been corrupted like her brother’s? Would Aldarion and Erendis’ marriage end so badly if he didn’t have the pressure of kingship? If the roles in the Amandil-Pharazôn-Míriel dynamic were reversed, how would that change things? Would Sauron get involved? There are SO many directions you could take this, I’d love to see any of them!

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Alright, that’s the end of my prompts/requests! Thanks for reading this far, and whatever you end up writing for me I am super excited to read it!! And if you have questions or ideas or something, my askbox is open and I have anon messages on, I’d love to talk! Thank you again for creating for me, you are the best! <3

[wazafam]

The newest trailer for Marvel's upcoming Loki series once again features a shot of a redheaded woman sitting with Loki – but it's entirely possible this character is Verity Willis, not Black Widow or even Lady Loki. The third Marvel series for Disney+ will follow the exploits of the God of Mischief after the events of The Avengers, when a 2012 just post-Battle of New York version of Loki snags the Tesseract and poofs out of S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

However, that action ends up breaking the timeline and so he's conscripted into service by Owen Wilson's Mobius M. Mobius of the Time Variance Authority, who capture and recruit him in order to help them fix the universe he messed up. The trailers make it appear as though Loki will be bouncing around various timelines and running into a number of new characters. One of those new characters is one some believe will actually be an old character: Black Widow. And, it's true, the trailer shots of a redheaded woman with a short bob sitting next to Loki in what appears to be an alien world does bear a rather uncanny resemblance, at least from behind and at a distance, to Avengers-era Natasha Romanoff.

Related: Loki Trailer 2 Breakdown: Every New Secret & Reveal

But there's another character being largely overlooked to this point, and it's one who has important ties to Loki in the comics: Verity Willis. Here's why it's entirely possible that the redheaded woman people keep spotting in the trailer is Verity, not Natasha - or even Lady Loki, as others have posited.

As with many Marvel movies and TV shows, the Loki series looks to be a very loose adaptation – call it a spiritual adaptation – of the Loki: Agent of Asgard series by Al Ewing & Jason Aaron. In that series, he's not working for the TVA, but the All-Mother. Determined to erase his past as a villain and become a truly good person, Loki agrees to be a secret agent for Asgard. For every successful mission he pulls off, one of his sins is stricken from the gods' record book and replaced with a good deed. Though it appears that in the series he'll be helping the TVA for slightly less noble reasons, at least at first, but the core premise is the same: Loki acts as an agent sent on various missions across time to right wrongs and atone for his crimes.

While Loki establishes himself on Earth, one human he meets becomes more important than anyone to him: Verity Willis. Verity is a human who, through an accident when she was a baby, possesses the ability to see through any lie or illusion, whether told for good or ill intention – making her an intriguing and formidable match for Loki, the master of lies, even with his magic. While he's shocked she immediately sees through his guise of an old man, eventually, the two form a bond that blossoms into a close friendship. Over time, Verity becomes Loki's best friend, arguably the only real friend he's ever had. While Verity hasn't made any appearances outside of the Agent of Asgard comics, she had an enormous impact on Loki.

It's unlikely that the woman in the trailer is Natasha. For starters, it's not generally been Marvel's way to reveal something that big in the trailers. Secondly, it just doesn't make much sense to bring her back. While Black Widow is now coming out a month after Loki, it was originally supposed to be released well before the Marvel Disney+ show and its new release date was only decided upon a few weeks ago. With Natasha's death in Avengers: Endgame, Black Widow director Cate Shortland and Scarlett Johansson both have said that the movie was meant to serve as a final goodbye to Natasha and give her the proper send-off she deserves. With that in mind, it would be incredibly odd for Marvel to bring back Black Widow for a cameo in Loki as it would undercut the emotional impact of her sacrifice in Endgame and everything her solo film is trying to accomplish.

Related: Phase 4 Needs To Explore Black Widow's Death For Bucky's Sake

Of course, it is possible that it is Natasha in an alternate timeline: After all, of all the Avengers Loki has gone up against, Black Widow is likely the one he's closest to having a grudging respect for seeing as how she played him at his own game in Avengers to learn his plan for the Hulk. The others he doesn't have much use for, but Natasha's successful deception is something that, in his own perverse way, Loki would approve of. But even that doesn't make much sense.

Nor is it likely to be Lady Loki for no other reason than that it would be a wild reimagining of how she looks in the comics. In the comics, she's literally just the female form of the genderfluid Loki and as such looks exactly like him: Black hair, green eyes, pale skin. That's not to say Lady Loki won't be appearing in the Loki series - in fact, it seems almost certain she will, especially now that the trailer has confirmed there are "variants" of Loki in different universes or timelines – it's just that it's unlikely she's the redhead people keep spotting in the trailer. Even more than Black Widow, Lady Loki would be a character Marvel would absolutely not give away in trailers.

There is admittedly a third option: It's Lady Loki glamoured to look like Black Widow. If that were the case, technically, that shot in the trailer would neither undermine Natasha's end as it's not actually Natasha, nor would it give away that it's Lady Loki as it doesn't reveal her on the surface. Still, for everyone convinced it's Black Widow or Lady Loki in that scene are overlooking what Verity could bring to the series.

The Loki of the Disney+ series is not the Loki who found himself on a redemption arc after the brutal blow of his mother's death and helping Thor save Jane Foster in Thor: The Dark World, losing his adoptive father and defending Asgard against Hela in Thor: Ragnarok, or attempting (however uncharacteristically poorly) to kill Thanos and keep the Tesseract from him in Avengers: Infinity War. This is the Loki who was under the control of the Mind Stone until recently and who had attempted to take over the world by destroying New York. If he wants to be redeemed, something or someone will have to propel him toward a redemption arc. That something could very well be Verity Willis.

Related: Loki Trailer Confirms Loki Is Behind The MCU's Multiverse Problem

In the comics, Verity was the only person Loki couldn't fool and because he had to be completely honest with her, she was arguably the only person in this world or any other who got to know Loki for exactly who he was. It was Verity's faith in Loki and her true friendship that gave him the encouragement he needed to cast off his title of the God of Mischief to become the God of Stories. It mattered to him that she always knew he was telling the truth after a millennium of him lying so much for so long that no one believed him when he actually did tell the truth. As he says to her in Loki: Agent of Asgard #6, "Verity-- I'm sorry. I'm not used to having friends, and I don't know how to be a good one. But I'm trying. And I want to change. I want to be better than I am. [...] Just... trust me. Trust in me.”

While the Loki of the series is a pre-redemption Loki, it doesn't mean he's a completely different Loki. He's still the same Loki, just from an earlier point of time. All the willingness to become a better man and grow closer to Thor is still theoretically inside him – he just needs a bit of a push and a reason to want to become a better man. There are a number of different ways Loki could set him on a path to becoming a true hero, but it would create the most interesting dynamic if it were Verity Willis, and not Black Widow or Lady Loki, who helps the God of Mischief do it.

More: The Loki Series Needs To Show Thor's MCU Journey From Loki's Perspective

Loki Theory: The Woman In The Trailer Is Verity Willis (Not Black Widow) from https://ift.tt/3rUvto9

[grigori77]

My Top Ten Favourite Horror Movies

10.  THE MIST – in 2007, writer/director Frank Darabont once again proved he does his best work when adapting master of literary horror Stephen King (after The Green Mile and solid gold masterpiece The Shawshank Redemption), this time turning to pure horror with one of the author’s lesser-known early novellas.  The result is another tour-de-force cinematic blueprint, a taut, harrowing tale of humanity pushed far beyond the brink by unexplained supernatural events and the monstrous lengths normal people will go to to stay alive, as a small-town New England supermarket is cut off from the outside world by a mysterious, monster-filled mist.  The Expanse’s Thomas Jane proves a complex hero, beefy yet vulnerable as local artist David Drayton, leading a high-calibre cast of Stephen King-movie/TV regulars – Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile), Andre Braugher (Salem’s Lot), William Sadler (The Shawshank Redemption) and Frances Sternhagen (Misery) – and “newcomers” – Laurie Holden (who must have really impressed Darabont, since he subsequently cast her alongside DeMunn in The Walking Dead), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s Toby Jones (as one of the most unorthodox action heroes in cinematic history) and Miller’s Crossing’s Marcia Gay Harden, pretty much stealing the film as deeply unhinged Bible-basher Mrs Carmody, who goes from unsavoury town nut to fervent cult leader as the situation grows increasingly desperate.  Darabont once again proves what an exceptional screen storyteller he can be, effortlessly weaving an atmosphere of mounting dread and knife-edge tension, as well as delivering some nightmarish set-pieces featuring magnificent Lovecraft-inspired beasties designed by The Walking Dead’s creature effects master Greg Nicotero.  When cinematic horror was becoming increasingly saturated with “gorno” Saw-derivatives, this was a welcome return to old-fashioned monster movie thrills (Darabont himself was heavily inspired by the monochrome scary movies of his childhood, and longed to make the film in black-and-white – indeed, this is definitely worth watching at least once in the “director’s cut” B&W version he included on the special edition DVD release), and not only proved one of the best examples of King on screen to date, but also one of THE key horror movies of the “Noughties”. Not least thanks to that ending, one of the greatest sucker punch twists of all time – reputedly King was most envious of Darabont on seeing it for the first time, wishing he’d thought it up himself. Coming from the King of Horror, that’s high praise indeed.

9.  30 DAYS OF NIGHT – when Steve Niles, the undisputable master of post-modern horror comics, originally came up with the concept for his definitive work, it was intended for the big screen, but he ultimately wound up committing it to print because he just couldn’t get anyone to produce it.  Interesting, then, that the comic’s runaway success led to its optioning by Sam Raimi and his production company Ghost House Pictures, Niles adapting the first volume alongside Stuart Beattie and Brian Nelson, with Hard Candy director David Slade at the helm.  Of course, the concept was always a killer – for one month every year, the sun never rises over the Alaskan town of Barrow, a fact that a coven of hungry vampires have decided to exploit in a midwinter free-for-all feeding frenzy.  Josh Hartnett manfully crumbles in what remains his best role as town sheriff Eben Olemaun, ably supported by Melissa George as his estranged fire-marshal wife Stella, Memento/Batman Begins’ Mark Boone Junior as hard-as-nails town loner Bo, Ben Foster (one of my very favourite actors) as a mysterious drifter with a dark agenda, and Danny Huston, who created one of the best ever screen vampires with nihilistic pack leader Marlow. It’s ironic that David Slade should have followed this with Twilight film Eclipse (although he was an inspired choice – after all, it’s the one that DOESN’T suck) – this is about as far removed from the toothless, blood-lite young adult series as you can get, an unrelenting, gore-drenched exercise in relentless carnage and ice-cold terror.  These vamps wouldn’t be caught (ahem) dead sparkling – they’re man-shaped mako sharks, all dead black eyes and jagged teeth, gleefully revelling in slaughter and playing sadistic games of cat and mouse with the isolated townsfolk.  This is definitely not a movie for the faint of heart, and it takes itself deadly seriously right through the unapologetically bleak ending, but it is nonetheless an endlessly rewarding thrill ride for the faithful, paying respect to all the great conventions of the genre while simultaneously ripping them to shreds.  Brutal, bloody and brilliant, this is BAR NONE the best vampire movie of the post-Interview age, and very nearly my all-time favourite EVER ...

8.  POLTERGEIST – 1982 saw the release of TWO of my all-time fave horror movies, and the lesser (but no less awesome) of the two is what I personally consider to be THE DEFINITIVE haunted house movie.  Tobe Hooper, director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, pretty much reinvented ghosts on the big screen with this thrilling tale of a small-town-American family, the Freelings, whose seemingly perfect home comes under the influence of a powerful supernatural force.  At first the effects are harmless – moving furniture and the like – until a night-time thunderstorm signals a terrifying escalation and younger daughter Carol-Anne (Heather O’Rourke) is sucked through a portal into the spirit world.  Long before he was the dad in The Incredibles, Craig T. Nelson had already become a pretty definitive cuddly American screen father as Steven Freeling, while JoBeth Williams is a lioness defending her cubs as mother Diane; then-newcomer Heather O’Rourke, meanwhile, is a naturalistic revelation as Carol-Anne, her innocent delivery of “They’re here!” becoming a genuine geek phenomenon all on its own, but the film’s real runaway performance comes from Zelda Rubinstein as diminutive Southern belle psychic medium Tangina Barrons, whose every screen moment is a quirky joy.  As you’d expect, Hooper’s scares are flawlessly executed, the atmospheric tension ratcheted with consummate skill, even if the director’s characteristic gore is kept to a PG-13-friendly minimum ... then again, this was a summer offering from Back to the Future producers Frank Marshall and Steven Spielberg himself, who was also the main screenwriter. Indeed, his influence is keenly felt throughout – the suburban world the Freelings inhabit is very much in keeping with Spielberg classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. – and there have been consistent rumours that he was all but the de-facto director on set.  The film (along with its sequels) has also gained a reputation for being cursed, with no less than FOUR cast members dying not long after (most notably Dominique Dunne, who played elder Freeling daughter Dana, who was murdered by her boyfriend just five months after the film’s release).  Whatever the truth behind these rumours, there’s no denying this is a cracking film – taut, atmospheric and consistently terrifying while also displaying a playful, quirky sense of humour and lots of heart, it remains one of the most rewarding and entertaining screen ghost stories around.

7.  BUBBA HO-TEP – Bruce Campbell is Elvis Presley!  He really is!  Although maybe he isn’t ... all right, TECHNICALLY he’s Sebastian Haff, a washed-up, long-retired Elvis impersonator languishing in a retirement home who claims he really IS the King (apparently he swapped places with the REAL Haff because he’d grown tired of fame).  Meanwhile one of his fellow residents is an old black man who claims he’s the real JFK, maintaining that President Lyndon Johnson had him dyed black and secreted in anonymity with a bag of sand sewn into the gap in his brain ... confused yet? Well hold on, cuz there’s more – the retirement home in question has been invaded by the malevolent spirit of a cursed soul-sucking mummy, and only these two fallen heroes can save the day ... yup, writer/director Don (Phantasm and John Dies At the End) Coscarelli’s initially criminally overlooked but deservedly seriously cult adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s novel is as typically oddball as the rest of his filmography.  It’s also his most moving and spiritual work to date – behind all the supernatural weirdness and quirky, offbeat humour this is a deeply-affecting meditation on the pains of growing old and losing your place in the world.  Bruce Campbell’s Elvis/Haff is a tragic hero, regretting his current lot and pining for former glories, but he still has the odd little twinkle of his former charm and bravado (particularly during his interactions with his nurse, played with spiky gutsiness by Ella Joyce), while screen legend Ossie Davis is stately and charismatic as “the former President Kennedy”, even when he sounds REALLY crazy.  Meanwhile the creature, “Bubba Ho-Tep” himself (Bob Ivy), is a fantastically weird creation, Coscarelli’s skilful use of atmospherics elevating him far above the “guy-in-a-suit” effects – he’s mean, cranky, and just as strong a character as his flesh-and-blood counterparts.  Coscarelli really let rip on this one – it’s chock-full of his characteristic leftfield comic-scariness (Elvis/Haff’s early encounter with one of the mummy’s scarab familiars is a particular zany gem), visually inventive and frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious, but in the end plays out on such a heartfelt, genuinely powerful and moving denouement that you can’t help getting a lump in your throat, even while it is one of those movies that leaves you with a big dumb goofy grin on your face.  It’d be pretty sweet if Coscarelli and his mate Paul Giamatti ever get their long-gestating “prequel” Bubba Nosferatu: Curse of the She-Vampires off the ground, but this is one that you can’t help loving all on its own.  See this if you’re a Coscarelli fan – it’s his best work to date – see this if you love quirky, unusual and original horror ... hell, see this if you love MOVIES. This is a true GEM, not to be missed.

6.  DOG SOLDIERS – my favourite werewolf movie is also easily one of the most offbeat – think The Howling meets Assault On Precinct 13 and you’re pretty close to the mark. Before visionary British horror director Neil Marshall had his big break with masterpiece The Descent, he made an impressive cult splash with his feature debut, a fiendish comedy horror in which a six-man British Army unit on training manoeuvres in the wilds of Scotland stumbles upon a pack of hungry werewolves and are forced to take shelter in an isolated cottage.  With their ammo dwindling and their weapons largely ineffective against the monsters (not a silver bullet between them, of course), it doesn’t look likely that ANY of will survive the night ... setting the humour dial for JET BLACK, Marshall keeps the atmosphere tense and the substantial gore flying (I was amazed when I saw this in the cinema that it was only a 15 – even just ten years earlier stuff like this was GUARANTEED a solid 18 certificate), while the squaddies are a likeably foul-mouthed bunch with a winning, sometimes enjoyably geeky line in spiky banter (Marshall makes frequent references to everything from Star Trek and The Evil Dead to The Matrix and, in one of my favourite nods, Zulu).  Trainspotting’s Kevin McKidd is brawny but enjoyably self-deprecating as nominal hero Cooper, Sean (son of Doctor Who Jon) Pertwee gives great earthy-shoutiness as Sgt. Wells, Darren Morfitt consistently steals the film as mouthy little bugger “Spoon” (short for Witherspoon), and Game Of Thrones star Liam Cunningham injects a strong dose of dark and dangerous as Captain Ryan, the special forces operative with a sinister plan, while Emma Cleasby is far from just a token female as zoologist Megan, who came to Scotland in search of the legend and seems to have found a whole lot more than she bargained for – she’s smart, tough and flat-out refuses to be a love interest, and definitely proved a good trial run for Marshall’s all-female cast in The Descent.  It’s impressively paced – after an initial character-driven set-up so we can get to know the lads (including a fun little scare-on-top-of-a-laugh moment), the action kicks in fast and rarely lets up for the rest of the film’s tightly-packed 105 minute running time.  The set pieces are thrilling and frequently fun (particularly Spoon’s ballsy little distraction technique), and the werewolves are impressively brought to life through physical animatronics created by Image FX (the Hellraiser effects team!) and a talented troupe of stilt-walking stunt performers – no cheesy CGI here!  Altogether it marked a blinding debut for a singular, visionary sci-fi/horror talent who’s still making his presence felt – Doomsday was a delightfully old-school slice of super violent sci-fi in the John Carpenter vein, while tight, gruesome little Roman-era suspense thriller Centurion proved that a historical epic doesn’t have to be 2+ hours long with a big budget to impress, and Marshall continues to garner real acclaim through his extensive TV work on the likes of Game of Thrones. That said, I can’t wait for him to return to the big screen, preferably with more dark, edgy, blood-soaked fun like this ...

5.  TREMORS – I’ve always had something of a bias towards horror movies that are also comedies, or at least that have a strong sense of humour throughout, and when it comes to funny horror movies, this brilliant throwback to cheesy 1950s monster movies is KING, baby! While it snuck in under the radar on its 1990 release, director Ron Underwood’s sleeper universally wowed critics, word of mouth helping it to become an impressive cult smash once it hit home video ... which meant I saw it at JUST the right time, the film quickly becoming a firm fixture in my favourites lists and a major milestone in my own geek development.  The premise is simplicity itself – giant underground worms with tentacles in their mouths terrorise an isolated desert community – but underneath the goofy concept is a surprisingly sophisticated movie that continues to influence filmmakers today.  Kevin Bacon was in a bit of a career slump at the time (Footloose had been SO LONG before), but this gave him both the shot in the arm he needed and one of his most memorable roles ever – odd-jobbing slacker Val McKee, who has to get off his arse and think big to beat the beasties; Fred Ward is the perfect foil as Val’s crotchety “business” partner Earl Basset, while Finn Carter is thoroughly lovable as scientist Rhonda LeBeck, a no-nonsense smart girl who can go toe-to-toe with the boys (and manages to lose her pants WITHOUT losing her credibility), but the film is consistently stolen by Family Ties star Michael Gross as tightly wound survivalist Burt Gummer – this might be Bacon’s movie, but Gross is the real star, deservedly becoming the driving force of the film’s various sequels AND the spinoff TV series.  The film opens with a killer of a funny line, starting as it means to go on – frequently hilarious and smart as a whip, consistently defying character and genre tropes and wrong-footing the viewer almost a decade before Joss Whedon started doing the same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all the while balancing the belly laughs with some genuinely scary set pieces.  The worms themselves (or “Graboids”, if you want to get specific) are spectacular creations, some of the most original movie monsters out there, and they still stand up well today, just like the rest of the film.  A cornerstone of the genre that wins over new fans with each generation, this is one of those films that deserves to be remembered for a very long time, and looks set to do just that.

4.  EVIL DEAD 2: DEAD BY DAWN – nobody does screen chaos like Sam Raimi, particularly when it comes to his horror offerings – still his first and purest love.  His original debut feature The Evil Dead is rightly considered the DEFINITIVE indie horror, and to this day remains the standard blueprint for all young, aspiring directors starting out in the genre ... it’s also a work of pure, unadulterated MADNESS once it gets going. Raimi upped the ante with this part-remake, part-sequel, the increased budget and proper studio resources meaning he could REALLY let his imagination run riot, and the results are a cavalcade of tongue-clean-THROUGH-cheek, jet black comedic insanity that STILL has yet to be equalled.  Bruce Campbell returns as unlikely “hero” Ash Williams, thoroughly out of his depth and failing miserably to hold it together as the ancient tome of evil itself, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (“Book of the Dead”), unleashes a horde of undead demons on the isolated forest cabin he’s brought his girlfriend to.  Wildly expanding on the supernatural back-story of his original, Raimi and co-writer Scott Spiegel also ramped up the humour, playing the horror on the blackest edge they can, albeit cut with a hefty dose of Tex Avery – Ash’s battle with his own possessed, eventually severed hand is like some demented skit out of The Three Stooges, while the absolute comedic highlight is the ridiculously over-the-top “laughing room” sequence, in which the seemingly inanimate objects in the cabin suddenly come to life and begin to taunt Ash; add in the great wealth of re-view-friendly visual in-jokes scattered throughout and this remains Raimi’s FUNNIEST film to date.  Campbell clearly had a ball, throwing himself into the action with everything he had, and he’s ably supported by a meaty (ahem) cast that includes a very pre-Slither Dan Hicks as a seriously scuzzy redneck and Raimi’s own brother Ted, virtually unrecognisable as one of the maniacal Deadites (“I’ll swallow your soul!”).  The creature effects from the great Greg Nicotero still stand up spectacularly well today (they remain some of his very best work), from hideous gurning beasts to insane fountains of blood, while Raimi’s direction is pitch-perfect, playing the humour beautifully while still (sometimes simultaneously) building up a near-unbearable atmosphere of unholy dread, and the climax is ingenious, beautifully setting things up for the enjoyably madcap trilogy-closer Army of Darkness: the Medievil Dead. Raimi has finally brought the trilogy the follow-up fans had been waiting decades for with the fantastically bonkers Ash Vs. the Evil Dead series, but this delirious masterpiece remains the franchise’s zenith.  Groovy ...

3.  JAWS – it may be the oldest film on this list (released in 1975, it’s THREE YEARS OLDER than I am!), but Steven Spielberg’s breakthrough feature has aged incredibly well.  Indeed, it almost single-handedly changed the face of big budget cinema, establishing the idea of tent-pole summer blockbusters and blanket-bombardment advertising campaigns (in particularly it was one of the first to make heavy use of television to drum up excitement and interest), ultimately taking over $400,000,000 on its original release (the equivalent of multi-billion big earners like Avatar today) and paving the way for Star Wars two years later.  Not to mention the film’s famous negative effect on beach-going for years after ... but under all that there’s a magnificent, masterfully-crafted film, still (rightly) considered one of the director’s best.  The plot may be ridiculously simple – New England beach-community Amity Island is terrorised by a man-eating Great White shark – but there’s a stealthily subversive story here, taking old genre conventions and twisting them in new, unexpected directions (which would, ironically, form a template for a great many later horror movies); while the first hour is a slow-burn thriller, the second is more like a light-hearted nautical action adventure with added scares.  The French Connection’s Roy Scheider virtually CREATED the everyman-out-of-his-depth hero with his portrayal of Amity police chief Martin Brody, a former New York cop who’s terrified of the water, Richard Dreyfuss is lovable comedic gold as rich kid marine biologist Matt Hooper, Lorraine Gary did a lot with very little as Brody’s wife Ellen, and Robert Shaw effortlessly steals the film as shark hunter Quint, a ferocious, scenery-chewing force of nature in the mould of Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab.  The film is immensely rich in great character moments, from Hooper’s rib-tickling arrival on the island and the dialogue-free moment Brody shares with his younger son Sean, to the undeniable high point of the film, where a humorous comparison of scars (which has itself become a popular homage-magnet in film and TV) leads to Quint chilling account of his wartime experience onboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis (the ship transporting the Hiroshima atomic bomb which was torpedoed in the Pacific, leading to over a thousand stranded sailors being eaten alive by sharks); indeed, this is one of Spielberg’s most well-written films, sitcom writer Carl (The Odd Couple) Gottlieb’s polish of author Peter Benchley’s adaptation of his own original novel still zipping and zinging today, although some of the best dialogue was derived from the actors’ own on-set improvisations (most famously Scheider’s now-legendary “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.”).  It’s also one of his most well-directed, with near-hypnotic tricks in editing and bold, adventurous choices in atmosphere-building, often a result of the shoot’s infamous difficulties – the animatronic shark (affectionately named “Bruce” by the director, and “the Great White Turd” by the crew) created by Bob Mattley (the guy who did the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) was impressive when it worked, but this was so rarely that the director had to devise several means of creating maximum tension WITHOUT showing the shark, which ultimately ADDS to the effectiveness of those scenes, particularly the “barrel-chasing” in the second half.  None of these tricks, however, work better than the score from Spielberg’s most faithful collaborator, John Williams, based around a deceptively simple four-note melody that evolves into something spectacularly evocative, which has rightly become the film’s most iconic element.  Humorous, intriguing, intense and still thoroughly terrifying when it wants to be, this is, bar-none, the finest man-versus-nature horror EVER MADE, and surely always will be.

2.  NEAR DARK – I’m a fool for vampires (much like I’m a fool for redheads, but that’s a whole other conversation), so bloodsucker horror is one of my very favourite sub-genres.  I’m also a big fan of Kathryn Bigelow – two of her most recent features, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, both pinged VERY LOUDLY on my radar (the former is my favourite war movie of the current decade), while her collaboration with then husband James Cameron, Strange Days (he wrote, she directed), rates high on my list of criminally underrated screen gems.  So what do you think happened when she made a vampire movie?  The results SHOULD have become one of the most celebrated and legendary features in the genre ... except that it came out in October 1987, two months after the admittedly cool and fun but far more glossy and dumb The Lost Boys.  Needless to say in the wake of that, Bigelow’s film got kind of lost in the back chatter, nearly flopping at the box office and all but vanishing into obscurity ... until its subsequent release on video (quite rightly) earned it an impressive cult following.  Myself included, because this movie is RIGHT UP my dark and dangerous alley.  Collaborating with The Hitcher’s screenwriter Eric Red, Bigelow crafted a (largely) deadly serious modern day supernatural “western”, in which cocky farm-boy Caleb Colton (Heroes’ Adrian Pasdar) hits on cute drifter Mae (Jenny Wright, probably best known for her supporting turn in Young Guns 2), only to get WAY more than he bargained for when her kiss leaves him with a crippling hunger and one serious tanning problem.  Pasdar’s all-knowing youthful swagger disintegrates as he tumbles further down the vampiric rabbit hole, while Wright’s fragile beauty compliments her character’s deep, soulful melancholy – the pair make for a compelling, tragic romantic centre anchoring the horrors that unfold as Caleb begins to lose himself to his burgeoning nature; even so, the true dark and twisted soul of the film lies with Mae’s predatory nomad “family” – Lance Henriksen is the definitive “dark father” as nihilistic pack leader Jesse Hooker, while his Aliens co-star Jenette Goldstein is his perfect mate as punk rock femme fatale Diamondback, and Joshua John Miller excels as Homer, the bitter old man trapped in a child’s body ... meanwhile Bill Paxton consistently steals the film as mad dog Severen, chewing the scenery to splinters with gleeful, feral aplomb and stealing all the best lines. It’s a potent, heady ride, taking itself pretty seriously throughout but deriving a subtle, inky black sense of gallows humour from the situation, and the set-pieces are intense and thrilling (particularly the shootout in a roadside motel at dawn, where shafts of sunlight become as lethal as bullets).  At times it’s also powerful, soulful and bleakly beautiful, Bigelow’s heavily stylised visuals brilliantly augmented by the spiky electronic score from Tangerine Dream.  It also subverts the classic vampire conventions with great skill and originality, with nary a cross, coffin or even fang in sight.  Like 30 Days of Night, this is the perfect antidote for anyone suffering from Twilight-overload – the monster can be quite interesting when he’s the hero, but he’s just so much more fun when he’s the bad guy ...

1.  JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING – while I’m sure many will think I’m mad for preferring this over Carpenter’s other seminal horror classic Halloween, this one’s much more my speed, a perfect exercise in sustained tension, paranoia and white-knuckle terror.  Critically mauled and underperforming on its release (it was labelled by many as a sort of “anti-E.T.: the Extraterrestrial”, which came out two weeks earlier ... and interestingly this opened the same day as Blade Runner!), it nonetheless became a massive cult hit now rightly considered one of the true DEFINITIVE horror movies.  Faithfully adapting John Campbell, Jr.’s novella Who Goes There? (certainly more so than Howard Hawks’ admittedly entertaining but ultimately very kitsch The Thing From Another World), it revolves around the all-male crew of U.S. research station 4, Outpost 31, in Antarctica, who come under threat from a body-snatching alien entity that can perfectly imitate its victims after investigating the mysterious destruction of a neighbouring Norwegian facility. Carpenter regular Kurt Russell (Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China) is at his gruff best as helicopter pilot R.J. MacReady, the taciturn blue-collar Joe called upon to play “hero”, Keith David (Pitch Black, Carpenter’s They Live) angrily flexes his acting and physical muscles as hot-tempered researcher Childs, Donald Moffat crumbles as ineffectual station commander Garry, and screen legend Wilford Brimley effortlessly makes the exposition compelling as tightly-wound biologist Blair.  The freezing Antarctic atmosphere perfectly complements the razor-edged suspense, the idea that ANYONE could be the creature lending every scene a palpable sense of implied threat, while the science of the fiction is thankfully largely put on the back-burner in favour of the story and scares; meanwhile there’s a cheeky edge of jet black humour throughout, from the scuttling disembodied head to Garry’s explosive reaction to MacReady’s improvised humanity-test. Rob (The Howling, Robocop, Fight Club) Bottin’s fantastically nightmarish creature effects are a magnificent achievement, still looking as good today as they did back in 1982, while master composer Ennio Morricone’s subtle, atmospheric score is a triumph of creepy, insidious subliminal effect.  For me, this film is the definition of fear – the idea that the threat could be literally ANYONE, that you could even become that yourself, be taken over completely, body and soul, is absolutely terrifying, and Carpenter executes this potential reality with surgical precision from the intriguing, icy start to the bleak, desolate ending.  Perfect.

[overthinkingkdrama]

Jona's Top 5 Second Male Leads Who Deserved to End Up Alone

[Disclaimer: This list is intended for entertainment purposes. It includes spoilers for the tagged shows. This is just my personal opinion, so I apologize in advance if I’m bashing your fave. I just woke up this morning and thought, “You know, I haven’t pissed anyone off in a while.”]

In the Kdrama fandom much is made of SLS, or Second Lead Syndrome, that is the condition of sympathizing with the secondary character, usually male and usually the hypotenuse of a love triangle, over and above the actual hero and wishing he would get with the female lead instead. Most of the time because the hero is an asshole and the second lead treats her like a human being. There are occasionally examples of SLS regarding the second female characters, but it is far more common with male, because unfortunately second female leads have a tendency to be stock characters or finger-steepling jealousy monsters, instead of fully fleshed out people. God knows I’ve had my share of SLS in every flavor…

But this isn’t a list about SLS, but rather the opposite of that. This is about the second leads I had no patience for. The ones who are a waste of air and screen time. The ones who annoyed me with their shitty “nice guy” attitudes or frustrated me with their passivity. The ones I immediately wanted to punch in the face. In short, the second leads who deserved to end up alone.

5. Kang Shin Woo/ You’re Beautiful

I’ve gone off several times in the past on the infuriating species infesting dramaland I’ve termed the “passive pining second lead”. I really dislike this character type, it drives me up a tree. So you knew going in one of these boys was going to end up on this list.

It didn’t have to be Kang Shin Woo. It could easily have been Ji Hoo from BoF or Kang Woo from Master’s Sun. Or any number of other second leads who fit this archetype. But it had to be one of them.

I can’t really explain to you why Shin Woo earned my particular ire. Maybe it was just teeth-grinding frustration I felt with each successive, convoluted attempt to woo Mi Nyeo. Maybe it was the weirdness of that let-me-stalk-you-via-telephone-while-you-go-on-a-solo-date thing. Or that fact that the male lead was such an unmitigated moron.

Shin Woo managed to miss his window while Mi Nyeo was still crushing on him hard. He had countless opportunities to confess his feelings and just waited and waited until she was almost obliged to fall for Tae Kyung out of sheer impatience. This is the kind of character that makes me want to tear my hair and yell at the screen “USE YOUR FRICKEN WORDS!”

Luckily, there’s an appealing “third lead” in You're Beautiful who saves it from mediocrity, and the drama is otherwise such dopey, fluffy fun that you can’t help but be endeared. Jeremy saves this from being higher on the list.

4. Lee Ji Hoon/ The Best Hit

Talk about a character who has one of the worst cases of “Nice Guy” syndrome I’ve ever seen. Lee Ji Hoon was one of those characters I was initially rooting for, since Best Hit’s ambiguous love lines appear to leave things open ended as far as the end game couple was concerned. For the first half of the drama it seemed like things could go either way, and the friends-to-lovers dynamic between Ji Hoon and Woo Seung was endearing and heartfelt.

Also Kim Min Jae is pretty. So, so pretty…

For a while I was worried he was going to fall into the “passive pining” category, remaining silent, and losing his chance. But finally he made up his mind to confess and I was ecstatic. Yes! Go for it! And that was just about when it all went wrong.

The way a male character handles rejection and disappointment is make or break in my book. It takes them farther than charisma, looks and even moral fiber. (Give me a pirate or a conman over an entitled asshole.) And for me Ji Hoon totally failed this very important test. After Woo Seung told him she didn’t return his feelings Ji Hoon continually badgered and attempted to win her over even when she asked him to stop, intentionally made her uncomfortable, and thrust a surprise kiss on her. My frustration with his character grew until the point were he told Woo Seung that he regretted meeting her first as his friend, after which point he was dead to me.

Despite the potential ickiness of timetravel paternity shenanigans, I was so relieved when Hyun Jae ended up being our male lead. The Best Hit remains one of my very favorite dramas of the year and I still highly recommend it. But if you want to come at me about SLS for poor, poor Ji Hoon, kindly get out of my house.

3. Han Tae Jin/ Another Oh Hae Young

Han Tae Jin had all the makings of a really interesting, sympathetic anti-hero. After all, he comes across like the obvious wronged party in this love triangle. Due to a case of mistaken identity, Tae Jin becomes the target of the jealous spite of our male lead, Park Do Kyung, ultimately causing the ruin of his business, the breaking of his engagement with the titular Hae Young, and getting him sent to prison! Ouch. That’s a lot of angst wrapped in an attractive Lee “Chiseled Jaw For Days” Jae Yoon.

And yet, instead of cutting a fetchingly tragic figure, Tae Jin turned out to be a vengeful, bitter, violent man incapable of letting go of a grudge even for the woman he supposedly loved. He was such an emotionally unstable, loose canon that I was frequently uncomfortable when he was onscreen. If I’m not very much mistaken he assaults Do Kyung not once, but several times, to such a degree that Hae Young ends meeting him to beg him not to hurt Do Kyung anymore. It struck me as incredibly messed up.

I really didn’t want Lee Jae Yoon on this list twice– I have nothing against the actor–which is the only reason his Cruel City character Detective Ji Hyung Min wasn’t on this list instead. I actually like Lee Jae Yoon! Just not the characters he tends to play…Luckily, Cruel City wasn’t extremely focused on the love triangle, it was focused on the pain. I chose his character in OHYA instead because, being a romance focused drama the way they handled the love polygon was more important to me. By the end of the drama they attempted to redeem him and it just didn’t work for me at all. Keep this dude the hell away from me.

2. Lee Joon Hee/ Falling for Innocence

There are a variety of strategies drama writers use to make us root for the jerk chaebol hero over and against the started-from-the-bottom second lead with treats the female lead with tenderness and respect. They give their heroes tragic backstories, slowly grow them into human beings, build UST, and give them melodramatic redemption arcs. The options are basically endless.

But why go through all of that when you can just make your second lead a secret scumbag murderer! There…all sorted.

This was honestly the most confounding bait and switch love line I’ve probably ever seen. When the reveal of who was ultimately responsible for the death of Sung Joon’s fiancé finally happened I very nearly threw my tablet across the room. They go to a lot of trouble to give Joon Hee a sympathetic long time unrequited love backstory as well as motivation for his sometimes morally dubious corporate ladder climbing. They also give him frequent shippy scenes with Sung Joon where he takes care of her and worries about her or vice versa. While in contrast Min Ho is absolutely horrible to her for a good portion of the show, the only thing that redeems him being a literal personality transplant.

They go out of their way to present this like it’s a legitimate love triangle, when given all of the facts it’s nothing of the kind. It makes me wonder why they even bothered trying to get me invested in the character since it turns out he’s actually evil.

Upon rewatch (started this one again rather recently) I had a lot more fun with this drama. Since I already knew what I was getting into I had the resounding pleasure of yelling at the screen every time Joon Hee and Sung Joon get a cutsy or romantic scene, which is very satisfying. The real reason to watch this show, Min Ho’s horrid behavior in the first episodes notwithstanding, is because Jung Kyung Ho is absolutely hysterical. For me it’s still kind of a garbage show with a garbage plot, but, hey, I love garbage.

1. Goo Jung Hee/ Ms. Perfect

There are very few characters in drama land that inspire in me the kind of hatred I felt for Jung Hee throughout this series. There are villians that don’t fill me with such seething rage. There’s a lot of adjectives I could use to describe Jung Hee. Loathsome comes to mind. An incomplete list of others would include: spineless, selfish, sniveling, and “the slimiest weakling ever to crawl the earth.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I hate this so called man. And yet, to my eternal confusion he is loved by and romantically involved with not one, not two, but three different women throughout the course of the show.

Actually, this entry poses a little bit of a problem regarding what we actually consider to be a “second male lead”. For the majority of the list so far I’ve been using the definition of the “second romantic lead” or, in brief, “the member of the obligatory love triangle who doesn’t get the girl” rather than “a male character with lesser narrative importance and/or subordinate billing to the male lead.”

In Kdrama the two things are usually one in the same. Usually, but not always. The reason is a) most dramas place a heavy emphasis on romance b) romantic fulfillment is usually the overt goal or the overt reward of the hero’s character arc and c) if a show ends without romantic closure (dating, marriage, babies ever after) it’s not generally seen as “satisfying”. But there are cases where the character with top billing or greater narrative importance is not meant to be our romantic lead, or even necessarily someone we root for. Jung Hee falls into this category, which made me wonder if I should even include him on this list.

Because Yoon Sang Hyun received top billing and was considered, by all reports, the lead in Ms. Perfect there was a great deal of disagreement and turbulence surrounding the intended endgame of the drama. Sung Joon’s Kang Bong Goo readily fits the mold of the romantic lead but his screen time is about half of Jung Hee’s, so I can readily understand where these concerns came from.

I’m happy to report that Jung Hee remained a subject of sometimes pity, but more often disgust, and the only thing that really disappointment me with his plot trajectory was that he didn’t end up dying in a fire at the end of the show. Missed opportunity IMO. While certainly a weird and flawed drama, Ms. Perfect remained entertaining throughout its run and I honestly would recommend it if for no other reason that Shim Jae Bok is a goodamn queen. There is the notable downside that this character has forever ruined Yoon Sang Hyun for me as an actor, as I can’t even see his face without feeling slightly ill.

I hope you enjoyed my top fave LEAST favorite male leads. This list was requested anonymously and I would be interested in producing other, similar lists in the future. If you have a subject you’d like me to cover please send me an ask or reply to this post and I’ll take it under consideration.

Jona