#part of why the focus on intention in casting is so fascinating to me tbh. he's usually making something from nothing

[talentforlying]

YOUR MUSE'S INVENTORY.

rules: list the things your muse carries in their pockets or bags in their everyday life. (optional: explain their significance.) repost, don’t reblog.

tagged by: @inhericurse thank you!! tagging: you!

carton of silk cut cigarettes — breast pocket of his shirt / suit. he thinks it's funny when he gets the ones with the most obvious warning labels / infographics, but he's not picky enough to ask for them specifically. there's usually a picture of kit ryan tucked into the back of whichever one he's carrying at the time.

1-2 toothpicks — also breast pocket of his shirt / suit. he has zero compunctions about smoking indoors, but once they started passing laws about that sort of thing, he had to pick up something to soothe that itch when he can't get away and light up.

paper clip — also breast pocket of his shirt / suit. for picking locks. he had a set of actual lockpicks at some point, but lost them between flats and hasn't bothered to get more. he figures there's more plausible deniability in a paper clip, anyway.

leather billfold wallet — back right trouser pocket. holds his ID, oyster card, library card, a playing card (for glamours, usually the ace of spades), one motel keycard per-country-recently-visited (which he can get to work on any empty room with a little bit of magic; his living situation tends to be up in the air, people just don't appreciate magical infestations / loud-ass music in the middle of the night / generally weird shit like they used to), and several strips of printer paper he's cut to be the approximate size and shape of pound notes (so that if he's ever short on cash, he can glamour them to fill the role. nobody's end-of-day till count is safe). holds upwards of a hundred quid when he's found a bookie that doesn't know his name, but that's getting harder and harder these days.

silver lighter — interior suit pocket / right interior trenchcoat pocket. his current one was a gift from his friend rich, after they got to talking about the phenomenon of anti-tourism matchboxes; it's engraved with a lighthouse and has PISS ON IT scratched in underneath, probably from a key.

outdated, badly cracked mobile phone — interior suit pocket / left interior trenchcoat pocket. i keep saying it's a flip phone, but i'm starting to consider that he defaults to a blackberry instead, and the only thing standing between him and a breakdown at any given time is tetris. he breaks / loses / ruins phones frequently, so there's a good chance he'll have a different model every time you see him.

loose coins — trenchcoat pockets. he tries to keep them in his wallet, but he's not that diligent about it. he finds it distracting when they rattle together and he often needs to be a little sneaky, so he's got a tendency to separate change out into different pockets to reduce the noise.

a variety of keys — trouser pockets / trenchcoat pockets. a key to his current flat in brixton, a key to chas's storage unit in streatham (where he stores all his occult kitsch), and a key to the back door of ray monde's old shop. he's also got a key to the black library at the vatican, which he's very smug about and which he hangs onto in case he needs a magic focus that's guaranteed to open any door. like the coins, these are usually separated out into different pockets.

a pendulum — trenchcoat pockets. for divination and hypnosis. he's got a couple of options he alternates between — gold pendant, chunk of amethyst on a chain, pocket watch (usually goes with the blue suit) — but the pendant is usually the one he forgets to take out of his pockets at the end of the day, so that's the most common.

2-3 condoms — trenchcoat pockets. always be prepared.

pair of white gloves, worn thin — left trenchcoat pocket. a holdover from the 90s when he used to wear them all the time, now they're just there because he's used to their presence and can't be arsed to find a place for them at home. also useful for touching things that aren't safe for skin contact, but he usually only remembers that they're there after he's gone and touched the things that aren't safe for skin contact.

various bits & bobs for casting — the trenchcoat pockets contain vast multitudes of random shit, depending on what he's been up to and what level of threat has been the most recent baseline. on average, you can expect to find some crushed sprigs of sage, pieces of chalk, individually-wrapped charcoal sticks, fragments of bone, tangled thread, baggies of ash / graveyard dirt / cinnamon / incense cones, and currency from all over the world.

[normal-thoughts-official]

I would have loved to see more interactions with the seelies- people who can’t lie but are crafty and secretive sounds fascinating. Think of the dialog! Alec going to magnus for advice since he has centuries of experience talking to them, Alec playing mental chess while trying to maintain peace. Would have loved getting more- but let’s be real, Cassaundra and the show writers weren’t clever enough to actually make any conversations like that of value.

SAME!!!!! honestly i would have loved to see so much more of the seelies. like bro do you understand that their culture predates the VERY EXISTENCE OF HUMANITY??? they are the ONLY kind of downworlders whose culture is completely detached from any human culture, not only because of predating it, but also because of the relative isolationism - which means human culture barely had any influence on their culture and history AS it developed

so like you can literally go fucking bonkers??????????? you can make ANYTHING. they have a whole ass society that doesn't have to have ANY ties to mundane concepts or history AT ALL. complete creative freedom. you could do ANYTHING! and don't get me started on the potential this has, within storytelling, to contextualize a lot of stuff modern western culture sees as natural or timeless as actually pretty fucking specific - like monogamy, cisheteropatriarchy, the gender binary, racism. all immortals have that potential of course since they can come from an array of different cultural and historical backgrounds but seelies in particular have SO much potential that is NEVER! FUCKING! USED! it all goes to waste and they are just a generic vaguely monarchic society that behaves literally exactly as modern western cultural standards. WHY. i'll never stop being salty, especially within sh where all this potential was there and instead they just villainized the seelies like no tomorrow for nO FUCKING REASON, and included a whole plotline about their ruler being a terrible power-hungry person and then proceeded to act as if that would have no influence on the seelies under her rule? thanks for nothing

like i know the seelie queen was so badly written that her own motivations even as a power-hungry wacko didn't make sense or were consistent (like why give simon the mark of cain for example, and for god's sake what kind of power-hungry crazy bitch gives their main enemy the power to literally kill her and destroy everything she has at the blink of an eye, like??? she literally tried to assist in her own genocide, it makes no fucking sense, i fucking hate it here) but if they are going to make her Terrible the least they could do was show how that impacted the people under her rule, especially if they are going to have meliorn be fucking tortured and either forced to display the marks of said torture or choosing to display them themself, like? please give your plotlines one singular thought

but of course it's easier to villainize seelies and reduce them to their obviously tyrannical ruler so they can go back to focusing on the shadowhunters and their issues. nevermind the fact that seelies are obviously equivalent to native ppls/third world countries resisting colonialism/imperialism in sh's stupid ass racial metaphor, which makes making their ruler a big bad unequivocally evil villain that is ruining everything A Choice. and a particularly choicy Choice considering they cast a middle-eastern man to play the most important seelie character. but if they are going to do that they could at least address how the people under her rule suffer and how that's a direct consequence of shadowhunter colonialism and interference, but why would we fkcnig thdo that!!!! when we can have love triangle drama or whatever

and tHEN there is the whole aspect of being unable to lie which is bound to have such an impact on their culture and history since they have to rely on other forms of communication to protect themselves - and considering the whole "tyrannical rule" plotline, to further the queen's agenda in the first place. and how telling the truth without preamble would probably be considered a huge display of trust in a society that has culturally developed so many ways of talking around things. like again the potential of the cultural and historic background for that society! it makes me go insane!!!

anyway all of that to say #JusticeForSeelies and #SeeliePlotlinesNow 2021 and forever. and YES i would have loved to see more interactions between them and other characters, particularly magnus because 1- admittedly i'm a hoe; and 2- magnus was clearly the one that had the most experience talking to seelies and that others relied on for that communication. he also seemed to be the most comfortable with them, which indicates there is either some sort of history there, or magnus just happens to feel relatively at home with the workings of their culture. which makes sense, because magnus also had to develop pretty similar defense mechanisms due to his, A- work as a warlock representative who has to interact with shadowhunters on the regular; B- history with having to deal with asmodeus, which required him to be very smart about what he disclosed and how, especially considering that he had to have been planning banishing asmodeus for a long time before he got to do it; and C- just history with abuse in general. we've seen the way he closed his heart off to new people; but at the same time, magnus is obviously an extrovert and likes to be around people in general. this meant that, in order to be able to both be in the kind of environment where he thrives and protect himself/his heart/his feelings, he had to learn how to interact with people while putting on a convincing façade, which requires pretty much the same sorts of wordplay and defense mechanisms that seelies use

magnus is good at wordplay, he's good at using talking to his benefit; we've seen that. he is also good at hiding and deflecting. he is notably not good at directly lying - every time he directly said A Lie such as "i am perfectly fine and not bothered by this at all :)" it was way less convincing than it was a clear display that he wouldn't budge. even alec, who has difficulty with social cues, noticed the lying and seemed concerned about it. so like. clearly his defense mechanisms were less lying and more dancing around subjects, directing conversation to safe topics, and guiding people to making certain assumptions and seeing sides of his that were safer and he preferred

so in that way it makes sense that magnus is somewhat in his element when dealing with seelies. i think "comfortable" is a strong word because this whole song and dance takes a huge toll on anyone's mental health and energy (which i think is something that could be very interestingly explored in seelies, their collective psyche, and their culture, the way they build relationships, etc. let meliorn have partners they feel 100% comfortable talking without preamble with 2k21), but it's something he is used to and a dynamic he can fall into without as much effort as others who would be second guessing themselves more and going slower, which clearly gives the seelies, who are used to it, an advantage

and like i know that i'm implying a confrontation or sort of situation where they are on opposing sides to seelies here, which i kind of am because i am thinking mostly about magnus' interactions with the seelie queen specifically, since she was the seelie he had the most meaningful interactions with. his interactions with meliorn were very few and almost never relevant, i barely remember them happening outside of generic downworld cabinet interactions tbh. but i don't just mean that because again, stop villainizing seelies 2k21

i also mean just generally that magnus would be in a more comfortable position talking to seelie strangers and slowly working into building a relationship and mutual trust. and just generally understanding them and the workings of their culture because he can empathize with the way they have built their social defense mechanisms. no one is 100% truthful to strangers, but seelies always seem kind of- analytical. and the cultural difference + anti-seelie racism makes them seem untrustworthy to most people, but magnus Gets It, so the potential for friendships! and the mutual understanding and the relative comfort around each other! and both parts understanding the enormity that is letting their walls down gradually and being more direct as time goes by. like.... aaaaaa

and yes magnus becomes a sort of reference on talking to seelies, mostly because he is good at "playing their game", but also making it a point to humanize seelies and making the other parts understand where they are coming from and how they feel :) and just improving their relations, particularly with other downworlders

im not going to get into alec because 1- the relationship between shadowhunters and seelies is already filled with oppression and a lot of complications, and particularly now that the seelie realm is politically fragile due to the loss of their ruler (however terrible she might have been), it would play into either white savior narratives or just straight up colonialism, especially given how alec as a leader already has a history of trying to build tutelage over downworlders (i don't care what his intentions were, it's still true, and although he's learning... well. he's learning, continuous action); 2- that would be more a relationship of opposition and i'm not that interested in that. but i would love to see seelies rebuilding themselves and their relationships and alliances with other downworlders particularly, and all the better if magnus is playing a part in that :)

in short:

more seelies

more magnus with seelies, especially friendships

more focus on the politics of seelies now that the seelie queen is gone

more seelies

more seelies

more seelies

[razberryyum]

The Untamed/陈情令 Rewatch, Episode 10, Part 2 of 2

(spoilers for everything MDZS/Untamed)

[covers MDZS chapters 29, 30 and 48…kinda]

WangXian meter: 🐰🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰+ 🐰🐰+ 🐰+ 🐰🐰+🐰🐰🐰🐰+🐰

Continued from Part 1:

I love this scene from the episode so much because for me it was absolute proof that Lan Zhan had totally fallen for Wei Ying: he actually SMILES because of him...not once, but TWICE...  

...and then the way he says good-bye to Wei Ying just about murdered me with sweetness. Even though he did smile once before, during the lantern raising moment at Cloud Recesses, one can argue that he was just reacting to the picture of the bunny because he loves bunnies; but here, there is no question whatsoever that he is smiling because of Wei Ying. I think it shows that despite maintaining a generally stoic façade in front of Wei Ying, his heart was already captured by him. Personally, I still don’t think he was actually in love Wei Wuxian yet but definitely crushing hard on him.

When I first time watched this scene, I remember being a downright distressed that Wei Ying was missing all of Lan Zhan’s little signals here because he was too busy getting drunk. At the time it felt like an opportunity lost for another lovely WangXian moment, but now I understand that the purpose of this scene really was to give us a glimpse at Lan Zhan’s feelings. That’s another aspect about The Untamed that I appreciate a lot: the fact that we are getting to see Wei Ying and Lan Zhan’s love story from Lan Zhan’s point of view. In the novel, the focus was mostly on Wei Ying‘s point of view, which makes sense of course since Wei Wuxian is the main protagonist of the story, but I think by giving us Lan Zhan’s side of the story and allowing us to see in real time what he was experiencing emotionally actually adds to the poignancy of their story because for me it basically reinforces how helpless Lan Zhan was: in terms of falling in love and then eventually in not being able to do anything to save the person he fell in love with. I felt the tragedy of his situation so much more as a result.  

Odds and Ends

My first impression of Nie Mingjue: damn, he looks like a hardass. I immediately felt bad for Nie Huaisang, it’s no wonder he was so afraid of his older brother. Compared to his novel and donghua counterpart, I think he was pretty well-casted. Even though Wang Yizhou had a relatively limited number of scenes, he had a pretty strong presence so that I couldn’t help but pay attention to him whenever he was on-screen. Word is the second online movie might actually be centered on the Nie brothers, which means we might get to see much more of him and Ji Li’s NHS. Although at first I was just a teeny bit disappointed that we might not be getting more of the Yi City boys’ story instead, the more I think about it, the more I actually like the idea of getting more of the Nie brothers’ story because I actually don’t remember if much was said about them in the novel other than just their basic introduction, so I would love to see more of their past and their relationship. I think it’s fascinating that even though on the surface NHS is utterly afraid of his brother, he obviously intensely loves and respects NMJ at the same time considering the lengths he went through to avenge his death. I hope we get to see NHS’s side of the events in the live action, especially during the 16 years between Wei Ying’s death and resurrection when he realized Jin Guangyao’s true nature and guilt, and then started to put his grand revenge plan into motion. I hope this also means we might get to meet the real Mo Xuanyu before he gave up his body and soul to bring Wei Ying back. It would be so damn cool if Xiao Zhan played him as well! If they are indeed constructing these two specials on scenes they’ve already shot but couldn’t fit into the series due to pacing issues, there might very well be a chance of XZ playing Mo Xuanyu. Holy crap, that means we might get to see Xiao Zhan play a FOURTH personification in the show, since young Wei Ying, his Yiling Patriarch and Wei Ying-Mo Xuanyu are already three distinct personalities! Oh my God, I’m getting excited, but I really shouldn’t yet since it’s all just rumors and my own wishful thinking now. Guess all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that that’s the direction they’re heading for the second special.  

By the way, I just have to mention something about the captions on the show: whoever inserted those captions with the characters’ names was clearly on speed or something because they would appear and disappear so damn quickly there was hardly a chance to even read them. I’m surprised I even got Nie Mingjue’s so clearly in the screenshot because usually half the name would be gone before the rest of it had even finished appearing. It’s a minor technical issue but it did bug me at the beginning because I was trying to read the damn names.

Seeing the Twin Prides of Yunmeng actually acting like twins who are completely in sync (giggling at how NHS is reacting to his big bro) just makes my heart feel so heavy now. They will never be like this again.  Makes me want to cry.  

Lan Zhan’s look was interesting though. Whenever I see him watching Wei Ying and Jiang Cheng, I sometimes wonder if he’s slightly jealous of the bond they share or of the fun they’re having. Or maybe it’s neither and he just enjoys watching him laugh and smile. Honestly with Lan Zhan, it might be a combination of all three.

These three gossiping dorks. I love them. They’re just so adorable when they get together; I love their interactions and I wish this wasn’t the beginning of the end for all the fun between them cuz there’s really not much more time left for any shenanigans after this.

I also love that Xue Yang is like cracking up in the foreground there but it’s not even certain if it’s because he can hear what they’re saying (about Meng Yao/JGY) or if he’s just being his usual psycho self. I really like that even when Xue Yang is not the focus of the scene, Wang Haoxuan (who portrays Xue Yang of course) is still constantly acting and reacting. I’ve seen folks criticize him for doing that, but I think that’s a little unfair since that had to have been the direction given to him. Not to mention, I think it’s entirely reasonable for Xue Yang to be extra like that, all the time.  

I don’t hate Jin Guangyao, similar to how I feel about Xue Yang, I simply can’t hate him, but I do absolutely hate what he did to Wei Ying, especially when I see this scene again and am reminded of how Wei Ying had also treated him with sincerity and respect, just like Big Bro Xichen did. And yet, while JGY was only protective and caring toward LXC, he basically chose to fuck Wei Ying over. I know the difference is in whom he loved, but still, damn him for that. Wei Ying deserved better from him.   

This was an interesting scene because of how great a risk Jin Guangyao was putting himself in. Wen Zhuliu could have totally accidentally killed him. Even though his aim originally was probably just to injure Nie Mingjue, JGY is not as strong as NMJ so a strike that may only injure the other man could have easily been fatal to JGY. So I guess in this instance, JGY’s intent on saving his master was sincere? But that’s still such a HUGE gamble. He is really so fascinating as a character. And his relationship with NMJ is fascinating as well because there were obviously genuine feelings between them as well—NMJ was freaking crying when he was banishing JGY—and yet the way JGY ultimately ended NMJ’s life was so damn brutal. I know there’s a fine line between love and hate but because their lives continued to be intertwined afterwards, I wonder when exactly it was the two of them crossed over to hate completely. I mean, I have an idea, which I will eventually give voice to, but I still feel a little uncertainty because of certain events that happen immediately afterwards.  

I wish we got to see just how Jin Guangyao found and rescued Big Bro Xichen and oh my God would I LOVE to see the time they spent together, presumably alone, in hiding while Lan Xichen was recovering from his wounds. I feel like we were royally deprived of some serious XiYao time by the live drama. Considering the fact that they seem to thoroughly support this ship, I’m honestly surprised that they didn’t use this opportunity to creatively fill in that big blank. I mean, instead of giving us all those unnecessary scenes of Wen Ruohan and his stupid zombies, they should have given us some XiYao-in-hiding scenes instead dammit.  

Questions I Still Have

Why didn’t Wen Zhuliu go for NMJ’s golden core? Especially since he clearly had an opening when NMJ was busy with the injured JGY? Also, how strong is Wen Chao supposed to be that he could even injure NMJ that seriously? I now he was already weakened and Wen Chao did attack from the back like a coward, but still, his cultivation level can’t be higher than NMJ so I’m just a little surprise his hit made any impact at all, especially since he seems mostly weaksauce in all other instances. This whole fight scene was just a little weird to me. And also, damn is JGY a shitty liar at that point. I actually laughed out loud when he full on denied that he was the one who killed that dude (who I thought was a total dick tbh so I kinda don’t blame JGY for killing his ass) even though he was still holding on to the murder weapon which was dripping with the guy’s blood. Guess he still hadn’t perfected his lying skills. 

Overall Episode Rating: 9 Lil Apples out of 10