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jadelotusflower · 3 years

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It’s Cold in that Fridge: The Case of Nakari Kelen

Since The Case of Mara Jade has been doing the rounds again, I’ve finally gone back to this post that has been sitting in my drafts for literally years. So let’s honour this absolute badass who deserved better:

Once upon a time, the Star Wars universe was but six films (and a tv series) in the story of the Skywalker family. But beyond George Lucas’ story was an absolute boatload of books, comics, games, and other materials that made up the Expanded Universe. When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and the rights to the Star Wars saga, everything in this universe was decanonised and deemed “Legends” - some aspects of this universe were retained or re-purposed, others sit in Disney’s figurative vault and will likely never see the light of day (and seeing how the ST turned out, maybe that’s for the best).

But this transition between Legends canon and Disney canon was not so simple, because the nature of publishing meant that there were novels approved during the time of Legends canon that would be released in the time of Disney canon. In particular, there had been the planned trilogy “Empire and Rebellion”, set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, with each novel from the perspective of one of The Big Three.

Razor’s Edge (Leia) and Honor Among Thieves (Han) were released prior to the Great Canon Split of 2014. But while the Luke-centric novel had been planned, it was not due to be released until well after the Split. So Heir to the Jedi (so called as an homage to the Legends progenitor Heir to the Empire) became one of the first books of the Disney canon.

What does this background have to do with Nakari Kelen? Perhaps nothing, but I do wonder how the writing process was affected by the shift from Legends to Disney - was the novel a relic of the old EU with any reference the LFL storygroup didn’t like excised during editing, or was it a trendsetter for the new EU, a Sign of Things to Come?

The most salient point being, of course, that Nakari Kelen - like so many love interests before her - was not allowed to go along her merry way at the conclusion of the novel, but was shoved into the fridge.

If there was one constant of the Legends EU, it was that Luke Skywalker’s love interests couldn’t catch a break. Mara Jade naturally lasted the longest relationship-wise, with almost twenty years of marriage to Luke before some bright spark decided she had to go (as per the aforementioned case study). But before Mara there was Jem, Shira Brie, and Gaeriel Captison (who came close to escaping the curse), and in the Legacy of the Force series they brought back sole survivors Akanah and Callista, only to kill them off for good too (and rather brutally, if I may add).

So perhaps when Kevin Hearne began writing HttJ within the confines of the Legends continuity, he was merely sticking to the status quo, or perhaps once subsumed by Disney they needed to make sure Luke's slate was clean (so to speak). And I can’t put all the blame on Hearne since I don’t know whether it was his idea, or LFL mandated - but regardless it was a poor decision.

The root cause of fridging, imo, is limited imagination. How best to cause your male protagonist pain if not kill off someone they love, or at least have strong feelings for? The answer is of course, easily. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Luke Skywalker of HttJ is fresh from his victory in ANH, a lieutenant in the Rebellion: young, not dumb, and full of...

Nakari Kalen is an absolute Queen a civilian volunteer and crack-shot sniper who loans her ship Desert Jewel to the Alliance. Luke is immediately attracted to her, they bond over a mutual love of fast ships and leaving behind desert home planets, and engage in the inexpert flirting of two nineteen year olds while also risking their lives several times over.

I want to make it clear: I actually really like this book. It's a breezy read, almost serialised as The Early Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and is ofttimes genuinely funny. And credit where it’s due to Hearne, many of of the supporting roles in the novel are female. Other than Nakari, there's Soonta, the Rodian who gives Luke her uncle’s lightsaber, Sakhet the Kupohan spy, and the Givin cryptographer/math genius Drusil Bephorin. In a genre where male characters are often the default for these kind of roles, it was nice to see, but makes the regressive fridging of Nakari even more egregious.

Luke and Nakari make a good team fighting brain-sucking monsters and Imperials, but more importantly they have fun together - she encourages him to work on his Force skills, and he successfully moves objects with his mind for the first time (leading to Nakari adorably dub him "a little noddle scooter"). It's a very sweet, if brief, relationship, and a respite from the danger of the mission. They spend the night together (leaving the reader to decide exactly what happened behind closed doors), and share a kiss before splitting up to try and escape bounty hunters. No prizes for guessing what happens to Nakari immediately after she received the Skywalker Kiss of Death.

I assume there were two motivating factors for why Hearne and/or LFL couldn't let Nakari live:

1. If she survived, fans would wonder why she doesn't appear in ESB/subsequent material.

I recall this bandied about on forums back at the time of the book's release, and to that I say - so what? Fans are always going to wonder, and try to paper over the gaps in canon, to make up their own headcanons to explain any any perceived inconsistencies. It's certainly no reason to kill someone off.

It is in fact possible for two young people to have a romance that just fizzles, or doesn’t work out for whatever reason - it should not require great maneuvering or explanation. If Nakari doesn’t show up in the next book in the timeline, what about it? The reader is smart enough to assume she and Luke broke up, decided to just remain friends, whatever. But it seems that the only way for a female character to exit stage left is for her to die, which is bullshit.

And actually, there's no reason why she couldn't have shown up again. ESB and RoTJ cover a month and a few days, respectively, of Luke's life - just because there was no mention of Nakari doesn't mean she didn't exist at that time, whether or not she and Luke were an item. She could have made an appearance in a subsequent novel, or Rebels, or the comics - she could have become a recurring character, showing up when the Rebellion needed her, or - heaven forbid - even have her own comic/book/show! Her existence in Star Wars canon didn't need to begin and end with Luke Skywalker, merely to service his plotline and backstory and abandoning the richness of her own.

No, the only reason Nakari had to die was to facilitate this:

It was a blow to the gut, realizing what that sudden absence meant. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but I had felt Nakari's life snuffed out through the Force, and into that void where she had shone anger rushed in - anger, and a cold sense of raw power and invincibility...I took a step to join in the hunt but stopped, breathing heavily, unaccountably sweating even though I felt so cold inside and the power of the Force roiled within me... I shook with emotion and power, and none of it felt the way the Force had before...I saw what kind of space it was , a black hole that would always be hungry no matter how much I fed it. I might never feel warm again if I didn't get myself under control.

Luke feels the dark side and is tempted by the boost of power it offers him, but immediately identifies it as dangerous and unnatural. I can understand why Hearne wanted to include this - it is a book of firsts after all: Luke's first solo mission, his first time using telekenisis, and ending with story with his first experience of the dark side makes sense. But it wasn't necessary, which leads to:

2. How to push Luke to touch the dark side without killing someone he has romantic feelings for?

Also, obviously, shite of the bull (or nerf, if you prefer). Even if this brush with the dark side was absolutely necessary for the novel's climax, there's any number of ways it could be achieved. At this point, Luke is fresh from losing important people in his life - Owen and Beru, Ben, and Biggs - lumping another death on top of that a narrative trick for Luke to react not only to losing Nakari, but the others as well. But it's cheap, the first card in the deck, and why not show a bit of imagination? Luke is young and inexperienced enough at this point that any number of things could be the catalyst - the whole book he's struggling with his growing powers, why not try and reach too far in the firefight with the bounty hunters, his anger and frustration with himself in not doing enough trigger the dark side temptation? It would work thematically and doesn't involve a fridging that ultimately has very little payoff.

Because Nakari is killed less than ten pages from the end of the book - afterwards Luke grieves, but ultimately chooses to honour her memory and be grateful for what he learned with her, recommitting to becoming a Jedi. It's all very surface level, and once again a female character's death facilitates a male character's development. Was it so imperative that Luke lost someone he cared about as part of this story? Sure, this was a time of galactic civil war, and it's far from unrealistic that these stories have a high body count, but who to make collateral damage remains an authorial choice, and in this case Nakari Kelen was (a) a female character of color, (b) a love interest of the protagonist - not just of this book, but the entire Original Trilogy.

I don't know to what extent (if any) race had to play in the decision. I'm sure there was a segment of the fandom absolutely livid that Luke Skywalker kissed (and maybe had sex with) a black woman. Was her death LFL hedging its bets, or demonstrative of the general lack of attention/respect they show their characters of colour?

In any case this was a chance to stand out from the old EU and it's fridge full of Luke's dead girlfriends, but instead they chose to introduce and kill off Nakari for the sole purpose of Luke's manpain and character development, and that's gross.

And then there's this:

A grisly yet reliable fact about custom bounty hunter ships is that you can always count on them to have body bags stashed somewhere for the easy transport of their kills. They often have built-in refrigerated storage, too.

NAKARI IS KILLED AND LITERALLY STORED IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE I COULDN'T BELIEVE WHAT I WAS READING.

I really hope this was unintentional on Hearne's part, because yikes. He was halfway there, this book was full of interesting female characters who had agency - Drusil in particular was a delight with her super math and inability to understand human interaction. Nakari was full of life and fun - capable but relatable, showing a different side of the Rebellion and those that suffered under the Empire's rule. Fridging her in her first appearance is considerably more vile, because it reduces her to a footnote of Luke's story, a plot device to Help Him Grow, rather than a springboard to tell more of her own story.

Because Nakari was a compelling character ripe for spinoff potential. I would absolutely have read or watched her continued adventures, juggling missions for her father's Biolabs company and trying to aid the Rebellion, shooting her slug rifle and cracking wise, maybe even finding a way to amplify her mother's song Vader's Many Prosthetic Parts to really stick it to the Empire, or try and free the political prisoners on Kessel.

The old EU was made great by allies and enemies of Our Heroes showing up again to help or hinder them, and/or branching out into their own material. We fell in love with them, and followed their stories even as they diverged from the main saga, eager to read more about their lives.

Nakari Kelen never got that chance. In many ways, she exemplified what Disney Star Wars was to become: an exercise in wasted potential.

#star wars #star wars meta #heir to the jedi #nakari kelen #luke skywalker #fridging #it's cold in that fridge #star wars expanded universe #nucanon

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dreadlord-mr-son · 2 years

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re: Still unnamed Colony AU

Decided to throw everyone into a Minecraft world just to make it easier to map. This style of world may be heavily-familiar to a couple of the characters, depending on my final picks.

I don’t plan to have it heavily gameified. Things won’t actually be square. Food saturation doesn’t heal you. There’s not an “inventory”. There might be respawning? Haven’t decided yet.

I’ve already picked out a large biomes world and an area in it to drop people.

Now I just have to finalize my character list...

I’ve made two short lists so far. One from my Wynnverse timeslines and one from my older OCs and original projects. There are some canon characters from various media (anime) already in those, as Wolfwood and Roy are both heavily tied into a lot of Wynn’s timelines. But I haven’t yet made the “characters from various media canons and fanfic of those media that I like” yet.

To go briefly over my potential picks from my older OCs and original works...

Forest’s Shadow: A sapient non-human I usually list as a “youkai” when I’m writing character lists. Not because she precisely is one, but because it’s a better term for what she is than others available to me. She’s a horse-sized vaguely canid creature who was going to be one of the main characters in a book I never wrote, where her and a young boy from a Native-American inspired tribe(1) who lost his tribe for plot reasons together gather a following and start a new family that expands into a tribe. Oh gee look there’s those same interests that are leading me to write this very fic right now. (1) This would be set on an alternate earth so no actual real tribes that exist or used to exist on our world would be present. Also it would be set in a time period comparable to thousands of years ago on our world so...

“Roach” (Michael Bradley): Well-off pothead with the coloring of a super-saiyan. His plotline was about him no longer being able to afford his house payments on his own so he gets a roommate who ended up being my self-insert. Basically a dumb self-insert sitcom character. One of my very rare straight male characters. Kind of bland to describe? But I’m fond of him. Nicknamed Roach because of the “pothead” thing. I always think of him as Roach and have to remind myself that his actual name is Michael. His story actually has a title: “Fish and Houseguests”. After the saying “Fish and Houseguests stink after 3 days”, referring to people overstaying their welcome. Thus indicating my long pattern of many of my own characters being supremely unimpressed with me.

Three characters from the same story now: Nathanial Sebastian Creighton (prefers Sebastian, thanks). Keneth Weaver Darlene Gothe A trio of college students from a comic I never drew a ton of titled “Something About Slugs” (an intentional non-sequitur). Sebastian is a rich gay guy whose homophobic parents sent him to college in another country so he could go and be weird and gay and artsy over there where he won’t be publicly visible and embarrass the family. Basically, he gets an allowance to keep his head down and pretend he’s not related to them. Very angtsy. Tall and thin and has super strength. Is a pacifist precisely because of the super strength -- he’s terrified he’ll seriously hurt someone by mistake. Suuuuper pretentious artist. Avoids speaking with contractions and gets poetic when drunk. Favorite forms of art are theatre and painting. He likes to dress in a black trenchcoat with a black sweater under it, even when it’s hot. Always wears long sleeves to hide his self-harm scars from when he was younger. I don’t have enough words for how much I enjoy tormenting this boy and making him chew on his own complicated emotions. :p I have a whole comic where I just drew him talking to a crucified Jesus statue about how he felt about the concept of God and his opinion on “love the sin, hate the sinner”. He is. So fun for me. Keneth Weaver is one of the middle children of a large family with many siblings. Very good at deescalating between his two best friends who... do not get along with each other. :p Always dresses in a puffy winter jacket with a warm knit hat (which he tucks his long blond hair up into) because he frequently gets cold chills. Is an absolute sweetheart and is the one of the trio most likely to go feral and punch a mofo for messing with his friends. Has not yet realized that he’s bi and falling for his best friend Sebastian. Everyone thinks he’s going to get into some nurturing care field of study but ends up getting into law from an idealistic desire to defend the disenfranchised. Darlene Gothe is... aptly named. She’s got a “slutty witch” aesthetic, liking to wear black dresses with ratty bottom hems and her cleavage out and swirly black eye makeup. Self-describes as “playfully bitchy”. Sebastian thinks she hates him because she’s constantly insulting and teasing him because she thinks it’s fun to play with him because of his dry sarcastic whit. So she’s just having fun and he thinks she’s being intentionally mean. Keneth sometimes gets so exhausted dealing with these two, but he does love them both. While Sebastian struggles with his complicated feelings for his disapproving parents, her parents are very supportive of her, but she just doesn’t emotionally connect with them and struggles to understand why family is so important to Sebastian and Keneth. Part of her trouble with sincere emotional connection is from school trauma. She was bullied through grade and highschool and coped with it by becoming sarcastically disconnected and prickly (hence “playfully bitchy”). I’m never going to end up writing the comic for these three but I love them so much.

Um. I’mma cut this off here and reblog my own post with the next batch of characters because I’m not even halfway through.

#mr son writing #colony au #forest's shadow #fish and houseguests #something about slugs

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grigori77 · 3 years

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Summer 2021′s Movies - My Top Ten Favourite Films (Part 2)

The Top Ten:

10. WEREWOLVES WITHIN – definitely one of the year’s biggest cinematic surprises so far, this darkly comic supernatural murder mystery from indie horror director Josh Ruben (Scare Me) is based on a video game, but you’d never know it – this bears so little resemblance to the original Ubisoft title that it’s a wonder anyone even bothered to make the connection, but even so, this is now notable for officially being the highest rated video game adaptation in Rotten Tomatoes history, with a Certified Fresh rating of 86%. Certainly it deserves that distinction, but there’s so much more to the film – this is an absolute blood-splattered joy, the title telling you everything you need to know about the story but belying the film’s pure, quirky genius. Veep’s Sam Richardson is forest ranger Finn Wheeler, a gentle and socially awkward soul who arrives at his new post in the remote small town of Beaverton to discover the few, uniformly weird residents are divided over the oil pipeline proposition of forceful and abrasive businessman Sam Parker (The Hunt’s Wayne Duvall). As he tries to fit in and find his feet, investigating the disappearance of a local dog while bonding with local mail carrier Cecily Moore (Other Space and This Is Us’ Milana Vayntrub), the discovery of a horribly mutilated human body leads to a standoff between the townsfolk and an enforced lockdown in the town’s ramshackle hotel as they try to work out who amongst them is the “werewolf” they suspect is responsible. This is frequently hilarious, the offbeat script from appropriately named Mishna Wolff (I’m Down) dropping some absolutely zingers and crafting some enjoyably weird encounters and unexpected twists, while the uniformly excellent cast do much of the heavy-lifting to bring their rich, thoroughly oddball characters to vivid life – Richardson is thoroughly cuddly throughout, while Duvall is pleasingly loathsome, Casual’s Michaela Watkins is pleasingly grating as Trisha, flaky housewife to unrepentant local horn-dog Pete Anderton (Orange is the New Black’s Michael Chernus), and Cheyenne Jackson (American Horror Story) and Harry Guillen (best known, OF COURSE, as Guillermo in the TV version of What We Do In the Shadows) make an enjoyably spiky double-act as liberal gay couple Devon and Joaquim Wolfson; in the end, though, the film is roundly stolen by Vayntrub, who invests Cecily with a bubbly sweetness and snarky sass that makes it absolutely impossible to not fall completely in love with her (gods know I did). This is a deeply funny film, packed with proper belly-laughs from start to finish, but like all the best horror comedies it takes its horror elements seriously, delivering some enjoyably effective scares and juicy gore, while the werewolf itself, when finally revealed, is realised through some top-notch prosthetics. Altogether this was a most welcome under-the-radar surprise for the summer, and SO MUCH MORE than just an unusually great video game adaptation …

9. THE TOMORROW WAR – although cinemas finally reopened in the UK in early summer, the bite of the COVID lockdown backlog was still very much in effect this blockbuster season, with several studios preferring to hedge their bets and wait for later release dates. Others turned to streaming services, including Paramount, who happily lined up a few heavyweight titles to open on major platforms in lieu of the big screen. One of the biggest was this intended sci-fi action horror tentpole, meant to give Chris Pratt another potential franchise on top of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, which instead dropped in early July on Amazon Prime. So, was it worth staying in on a Saturday night instead of heading out for something on the BIG screen? Mostly yes, although it’s mainly a trashy, guilty pleasure big budget B-picture charm that makes this such a worthwhile experience – the film’s biggest influences are clearly Independence Day and Starship Troopers, two admirably clunky blockbusters that DEFINED prioritising big spectacle and overblown theatrics over intelligent writing and realistic storytelling. It doesn’t help that the premise is pure bunk – in 2022, a wormhole opens from thirty years in the future, and a plea for help is sent back with a bunch of very young future soldiers. Seems Earth will become overrun by an unstoppable swarm of nasty alien critters called Whitespikes in 25 years, and the desperate human counteroffensive have no choice but to bring soldiers from our present into the future to help them fight back and save the humanity from imminent extinction. Less than a year later, the world’s standing armies have been decimated and a worldwide draft has been implemented, with normal everyday adults being sent through for a seven day tour from which very few return. Pratt plays biology teacher and former Green Beret Dan Forrester, one of the latest batch of draftees to be sent into the future along with a selection of chefs, soccer moms and other average joes – his own training and experience serves him better than most when the shit hits the fan, but it soon becomes clear that he’s just as out of his depth as everyone else as the sheer enormity of the threat is revealed. But when he becomes entangled with a desperate research outfit led by Muri (Chuck’s Yvonne Strahovski) who seem to be on the verge of a potential world-changing scientific breakthrough, Dan realises there just might be a slender hope for humanity after all … this is every bit as over-the-top gung-ho bonkers as it sounds, and just as much fun. Director Chris McKay may still be pretty fresh (with only The Lego Batman Movie under his belt to date), but he shows a lot of talent and potential for big budget blockbuster filmmaking here, delivering with guts and bravado on some major action sequences (a fraught ticking-clock SAR operation through a war-torn Miami is the film’s undeniable highlight, but a desperate battle to escape a blazing oil rig also really impresses), as well as handling some impressively complex visual effects work and wrangling some quality performances from his cast (altogether it bodes well for his future, which includes Nightwing and Johnny Quest as future projects). Chris Pratt can do this kind of stuff in his sleep – Dan is his classic fallible and self-deprecating but ultimately solid and kind-hearted action hero fare, effortlessly likeable and easy to root for – and his supporting cast are equally solid, Strahovsky going toe-to-toe with him in the action sequences while also creating a rewardingly complex smart-woman/badass combo in Muri, while the other real standouts include Sam Richardson (Veep, Werewolves Within) and Edwin Hodge (The Purge movies) as fellow draftees Charlie and Dorian, the former a scared-out-of-his-mind tech geek while the latter is a seriously hardcore veteran serving his THIRD TOUR, and the ever brilliant J.K. Simmonds as Dan’s emotionally scarred estranged Vietnam-vet father, Jim. Sure, it’s derivative as hell and thoroughly predictable (with more than one big twist you can see coming a mile away), but the pace is brisk, the atmosphere pregnant with a palpable doomed urgency, and the creatures themselves are a genuinely convincing world-ending threat, the design team and visual effects wizards creating genuine nightmare fuel in the feral and unrelenting Whitespikes. Altogether this WAS an ideal way to spend a comfy Saturday night in, but I think it could have been JUST AS GOOD for a Saturday night OUT at the Pictures …

8. ARMY OF THE DEAD – another high profile release that went straight to streaming was this genuine monster hit for Netflix from one of this century’s undeniable heavyweight action cinema masters, the indomitable Zack Snyder, who kicked off his career with an audience-dividing (but, as far as I’m concerned, ultimately MASSIVELY successful) remake of George Romero’s immortal Dawn of the Dead, and has finally returned to zombie horror after close to two decades away. The end result is, undeniably, the biggest cinematic guilty pleasure of the entire summer, a bona fide outbreak horror EPIC in spite of its tightly focused story – Dave Bautista plays mercenary Scott Ward, leader a badass squad of soldiers of fortune who were among the few to escape a deadly outbreak of a zombie virus in the city of Las Vegas, enlisted to break into the vault of one of the Strip’s casinos by owner Bly Tanaka (a fantastically game turn from Hiroyuki Sanada) and rescue $200 million still locked away inside. So what’s the catch? Vegas remains ground zero for the outbreak, walled off from the outside world but still heavily infested within, and in less than three days the US military intends to sterilise the site with a tactical nuke. Simple premise, down and dirty, trashy flick, right? Wrong – Snyder has never believed in doing things small, having brought us unapologetically BIG cinema with the likes of 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel and, most notably, his version of Justice League, so this is another MASSIVE undertaking, every scene shot for maximum thrills or emotional impact, each set-piece executed with his characteristic militaristic precision and explosive predilection (a harrowing fight for survival against a freshly-awakened zombie horde in tightly packed casino corridors is the film’s undeniable highlight), and the gauzy, dreamlike cinematography gives even simple scenes an intriguing and evocative edge that really does make you feel like you’re watching something BIG. The characters all feel larger-than-life too – Bautista can seem somewhat cartoonish at times, and this role definitely plays that as a strength, making Scott a rock-hard alpha male in the classic Hollywood mould, but he’s such a great actor that of course he’s able to invest the character with real rewarding complexity beneath the surface; Ana de la Reguera (Eastbound & Down) and Nora Arnezeder (Zoo, Mozart in the Jungle), meanwhile, both bring a healthy dose of oestrogen-fuelled badassery to proceedings as, respectively, Scott’s regular second-in-command, Maria Cruz, and Lilly the Coyote, Power’s Omari Hardwick and Matthias Schweighofer (You Are Wanted) make for a fun odd-couple double act as circular-saw-wielding merc Vanderohe and Dieter, the nervous, nerdy German safecracker brought in to crack the vault, and Fear the Walking Dead’s Garrett Dillahunt channels spectacular scumbag energy as Tanaka’s sleazy former casino boss Martin, while latecomer Tig Notaro (Star Trek Discovery) effortlessly rises above her last-minute-casting controversy to deliver brilliantly as sassy and acerbic chopper pilot Peters. I think it goes without saying that Snyder can do this in his sleep, but he definitely wasn’t napping here – he pulled out all the stops on this one, delivering a thrilling, darkly comic and endearingly CRACKERS zombie flick that not only compares favourably to his own Dawn but is, undeniably, his best film for AGES. Netflix certainly seem to be pleased with the results – a spinoff prequel, Army of Thieves, starring Dieter in another heist thriller, is set to drop in October, with an animated series following in the Spring, and there’s already rumours of a sequel in development. I’m certainly up for more …

7. BLACK WIDOW – no major blockbuster property was hit harder by COVID than the MCU, which saw its ENTIRE SLATE for 2020 delayed for over a year in the face of Marvel Studios bowing to the inevitability of the Pandemic and unwilling to sacrifice those all-important box-office receipts by just sending their films straight to streaming. The most frustrating part for hardcore fans of the series was the delay of a standalone film that was already criminally overdue – the solo headlining vehicle of founding Avenger and bona fide female superhero ICON Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow. Equally frustratingly, then, this film seems set to be overshadowed by real life controversy as star and producer Scarlett Johansson goes head-to-head with Disney in civil court over their breach-of-contract after they hedged their bets by releasing the film simultaneously in cinemas and on their own streaming platform, which has led to poor box office as many of the film’s potential audience chose to watch it at home instead of risk movie theatres with the virus still very much remaining a threat (and Disney have clearly reacted AGAIN, now backtracking on their release policy by instigating a new 45-day cinematic exclusivity window on all their big releases for the immediate future). But what of the film itself? Well Black Widow is an interesting piece of work, director Cate Shortland (Berlin Syndrome) and screenwriter Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) delivering a decidedly stripped-back, lean and intellectual beast that bears greater resemblance to the more cerebral work of the Russo Brothers on their Captain America films than the more classically bombastic likes of Iron Man, Thor or the Avengers flicks, concentrating on story and characters over action and spectacle as we wind back the clock to before the events of Infinity War and Endgame, when Romanoff was on the run after Civil War, hunted by the government-appointed forces of US Secretary of State “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) after violating the Sokovia Accords. Then a mysterious delivery throws her back into the fray as she finds herself targeted by a mysterious assassin, forcing her to team up with her estranged “sister” Yelena Belova (Midsommar’s Florence Pugh), another Black Widow who’s just gone rogue from the same Red Room Natasha escaped years ago, armed with a McGuffin capable of foiling a dastardly plot for world domination. The reluctant duo need help in this endeavour though, enlisting the aid of their former “parents”, veteran Widow and scientist Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) and Alexie Shostakov (Stranger Things’ David Harbour), aka the Red Guardian, a Russian super-soldier intended to be their counterpart to Captain America, who’s been languishing in a Siberian gulag for the last twenty years. After the Earth-shaking, universe-changing events of recent MCU events, this film certainly feels like a much more self-contained, modest affair, playing for much smaller stakes, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less worthy of our attention – this is as precision-crafted as anything we’ve seen from Marvel so far, but it also feels like a refreshing change of pace after all those enormous cosmic shenanigans, while the script is as tight as a drum, propelling a taut, suspense-filled thriller that certainly doesn’t scrimp on the action front. Sure, the set-pieces are very much in service of the story here, but they’re still the pre-requisite MCU rollercoaster rides, a selection of breathless chases and bone-crunching fights that really do play to the strengths of one of our favourite Avengers, but this is definitely one of those films where the real fireworks come when the film focuses on the characters – Johansson is so comfortable with her character she’s basically BECOME Natasha Romanoff, kickass and ruthless and complex and sassy and still just desperate for a family (though she hides it well throughout the film), while Weisz delivers one of her best performances in years as a peerless professional who keeps her emotions tightly reigned in but slowly comes to realise that she was never more happy than when she was pretending to be a simple mother, and Ray Winstone does a genuinely fantastic job of taking a character who could have been one of the MCU’s most disappointingly bland villains, General Dreykov, master of the Red Room, and investing him with enough oily charisma and intense presence to craft something truly memorable (frustratingly, the same cannot be said for the film’s supposed main physical threat, Taskmaster, who performs well in their frustratingly brief appearances but ultimately gets Darth Maul levels of short service). The true scene-stealers in the film, however, are Alexie and Yelena – Harbour’s clearly having the time of his life hamming it up as a self-important, puffed-up peacock of a superhero who never got his shot and is clearly (rightly) decidedly bitter about it, preferring to relive the life he SHOULD have had instead of remembering the good in the one he got; Pugh, meanwhile, is THE BEST THING IN THE WHOLE MOVIE, easily matching Johanssen scene-for-scene in the action stakes but frequently out-performing her when it comes to acting, investing Yelena with a sweet naivety and innocence and a certain amount of quirky geekiness that makes for one of the year’s most endearing female protagonists (certainly one who, if the character goes the way I think she will, is thoroughly capable of carrying the torch for the foreseeable future). In the end this is definitely one of the LEAST typical, by-the-numbers MCU films to date, and by delivering something a little different I think they’ve given us just the kind of leftfield swerve the series needs right now. It’s certainly one of their most fascinating and rewarding films so far, and since it seems to be Johansson’s final tour of duty as the Black Widow, it’s also a most fitting farewell indeed.

6. WRATH OF MAN – Guy Ritchie’s latest (regarded by many as a triumphant return to form, which I consider unfair since I don’t think he ever went away, especially after 2020’s spectacular The Gentlemen) is BY FAR his darkest film – let’s get this clear from the start. Anyone who knows his work knows that Ritchie consistently maintains a near flawless balance and humour and seriousness in his films that gives them a welcome quirkiness that is one of his most distinctive trademarks, so for him to suddenly deliver a film which takes itself SO SERIOUSLY is one hell of a departure. This is a film which almost REVELS in its darkness – Ritchie’s always loved bathing in man’s baser instincts, but Wrath of Man almost makes a kind of twisted VIRTUE out of wallowing in the genuine evils that men are capable of inflicting on each other. The film certainly kicks off as it means to go on – In a tour-de-force single-shot opening, we watch a daring armoured car robbery on the streets of Los Angeles that goes horrifically wrong, an event which will have devastating consequences in the future. Five months later, Fortico Security hires taciturn Brit Patrick Hill (Jason Statham) to work as a guard in one of their trucks, and on his first run he single-handedly foils another attempted robbery with genuinely uncanny combat skills. The company is thrilled, amazed by the sheer ability of their new hire, but Hill’s new colleagues are more concerned, wondering exactly what they’ve let themselves in for. After a second foiled robbery, it becomes clear that Hill’s reputation has grown, but fellow guard Haiden (Holt McCallany), aka “Bullet”, begins to suspect there might be something darker going on … Ritchie is firing on all cylinders here, delivering a PERFECT slow-burn suspense thriller which plays its cards close to its chest and cranks up its piano wire tension with artful skill as it builds to a devastating, knuckle-whitening explosive heist that acts as a cathartic release for everything that’s built up over the past hour and a half. In typical Ritchie style the narrative is non-linear, the story unfolding in four distinct parts told from clearly differentiated points of view, allowing the clues to be revealed at a trickle that effortlessly draws the viewer in as they fall deeper down the rabbit hole, leading to a harrowing but strangely poignant denouement which is perfectly in tune with everything that’s come before. It’s an immense pleasure finally getting to see Statham working with Ritchie again, and I don’t think he’s ever been better than he is here – he's always been a brilliantly understated actor, but there’s SO MUCH going on under Hill’s supposedly impenetrable calm that every little peek beneath the armour is a REVELATION; McCallany, meanwhile, has landed his best role since his short but VERY sweet supporting turn in Fight Club, seemingly likeable and fallible as the kind of easy-going co-worker anyone in the service industry would be THRILLED to have, but giving Bullet far more going on under the surface, while there are uniformly excellent performances from a top-shelf ensemble supporting cast which includes Josh Hartnett, Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice, Sicario), Andy Garcia, Laz Alonso (The Boys), Eddie Marsan, Niamh Algar (Raised By Wolves) and Darrell D’Silva (Informer, Domina), and a particularly edgy and intense turn from Scott Eastwood. This is one of THE BEST thrillers of the year, by far, a masterpiece of mood, pace and plot that ensnares the viewer from its gripping opening and hooks them right up to the close, a triumph of the genre and EASILY Guy Ritchie’s best film since Snatch. Regardless of whether or not it’s a RETURN to form, we can only hope he continues to deliver fare THIS GOOD in the future …

5. FEAR STREET (PARTS 1-3) – Netflix have gotten increasingly ambitious with their original filmmaking over the years, and some of this years’ offerings have reached new heights of epic intention. Their most exciting release of the summer was this adaptation of popular children’s horror author R.L. Stine’s popular book series, a truly gargantuan undertaking as the filmmakers set out to create an entire TRILOGY of films which were then released over three consecutive weekends. Interestingly, these films are most definitely NOT for kids – this is proper, no-holds-barred supernatural slasher horror, delivering highly calibrated shocks and precision jump scares, a pervading atmosphere of insidious dread and a series of inventively gruesome kills. The story revolves around two neighbouring small towns which have had vastly different fortunes over more than three centuries of existence – while the residents of Sunnyvale are unusually successful, living idyllic lives in peace and prosperity, luck has always been against the people of Shadyside, who languish in impoverishment, crime and misfortune, while the town has become known as the Murder Capital of the USA due to frequent spree killings. Some attribute this to the supposed curse of a local urban legend, Sarah Fier, who became known as the Fier Witch after her execution for witchcraft in 1668, but others dismiss this as simple superstition. Part 1 is set in 1994, as the latest outbreak of serial mayhem begins in Shadyside, dragging a small group of local teens – Deena Johnson (She Never Died’s Kiana Madeira) and Samantha Fraser (Olivia Scott Welch), a young lesbian couple going through a difficult breakup, Deena’s little brother Josh (The Haunted Hathaways’ Benjamin Flores Jr.), a nerdy history geek who spends most of his time playing video games or frequenting violent crime-buff online chatrooms, and their delinquent friends Simon (Eight Grade’s Fred Hechinger) and Kate (Julia Rehwald) – into the age-old ghostly conspiracy as they find themselves besieged by indestructible undead serial killers from the town’s past, reasoning that the only way they can escape with their lives is to solve the mystery and bring the Fier Witch some much needed closure. Part 2, meanwhile, flashes back to a previous outbreak in 1977, in which local sisters Ziggy (Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink) and Cindy Berman (Emily Rudd), together with future Sunnyvale sheriff Nick Goode (Ted Sutherland) were among the kids hunted by said killers during a summer camp “colour war”. As for Part 3, that goes all the way back to 1668 to tell the story of what REALLY happened to Sarah Fier, before wrapping up events in 1994, culminating in a terrifying, adrenaline-fuelled showdown in the Shadyside Mall. Throughout, the youthful cast are EXCEPTIONAL, Madeira, Welch, Flores Jr., Sink and Rudd particularly impressing, while there are equally strong turns from Ashley Zuckerman (The Code, Designated Survivor) and Community’s Gillian Jacobs as the grown-up versions of two key ’77 kids, and a fun cameo from Maya Hawke in Part 1. This is most definitely retro horror in the Stranger Things mould, perfectly executed period detail bringing fun nostalgic flavour to all three of the timelines while the peerless direction from Leigh Janiak (Honeymoon) and wire-tight, sharp-witted screenplays from Janiak, Kyle Killen (Lone Star, The Beaver), Phil Graziadel, Zak Olkewicz and Kate Trefry strike a perfect balance between knowing dark humour and knife-edged terror, as well as weaving an intriguingly complex narrative web that pulls the viewer in but never loses them to overcomplication. The design, meanwhile, is evocative, the cinematography (from Stanger Things’ Caleb Heymann) is daring and magnificently moody, and the killers and other supernatural elements of the film are handled with skill through largely physical effects. This is definitely not a standard, by-the-numbers slasher property, paying strong homage to the sub-genre’s rules but frequently subverting them with expert skill, and it’s as much fun as it is frightening. Give us some more like this please, Netflix!

4. THE SPARKS BROTHERS – those who’ve been following my reviews for a while will known that while I do sometimes shout about documentary films, they tend to show up in my runners-up lists – it’s a great rarity for one to land in one of my top tens. This lovingly crafted deep-dive homage to cult band Sparks, from self-confessed rabid fanboy Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim), is something VERY SPECIAL INDEED, then … there’s a vague possibility some of you may have heard the name before, and many of you will know at least one or two of their biggest hits without knowing it was them (their greatest hit of all time, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us, immediately springs to mind), but unless you’re REALLY serious about music it’s quite likely you have no idea who they are, namely two brothers from California, Russell and Ronald Mael, who formed a very sophisticated pop-rock band in the late 60s and then never really went away, having moments of fame but mostly working away in the background and influencing some of the greatest bands and musical artists that followed them, even if many never even knew where that influence originally came from. Wright’s film is an engrossing joy from start to finish (despite clocking in at two hours and twenty minutes), following their eclectic career from obscure inception as Halfnelson, through their first real big break with third album Kimono My Place, subsequent success and then fall from popularity in the mid-70s, through several subsequent revitalisations, all the way up to the present day with their long-awaited cinematic breakthrough, revolutionary musical feature Annette – throughout Wright keeps the tone light and the pace breezy, allowing a strong and endearing sense of irreverence to rule the day as fans, friends and the brothers themselves offer up fun anecdotes and wax lyrical about what is frequently a larger-than-life tragicomic soap opera, utilising fun, crappy animation and idiosyncratic stock footage inserts alongside talking-head interviews that were made with a decidedly tongue-in-cheek style – Mike Myers good-naturedly rants about how we can see his “damned mole” while 80s New Romantic icons Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, while shot together, are each individually labelled as “Duran”. Ron and Russ themselves, meanwhile, are clearly having huge fun, gently ribbing each other and dropping some fun deadpan zingers throughout proceedings, easily playing to the band’s strong, idiosyncratic sense of hyper-intelligent humour, while the aforementioned celebrity talking-heads are just three amongst a whole wealth of famous faces that may surprise you – there’s even an appearance by Neil Gaiman, guys! Altogether this is 2+ hours of bright and breezy fun chock full of great music and fascinating information, and even hardcore Sparks fans are likely to learn more than a little over the course of the film, while for those who have never heard of Sparks before it’s a FANTASTIC introduction to one of the greatest ever bands that you’ve never heard of. With luck there might even be more than a few new fans before the year is out …

3. GUNPOWDER MILKSHAKE – Netflix’ BEST offering of the summer was this surprise hit from Israeli writer-director Navot Papushado (Rabies, Big Bad Wolves), a heavily stylised black comedy action thriller that passes the Bechdel Test with FLYING COLOURS. Playing like a female-centric John Wick, it follows ice-cold, on-top-of-her-game assassin Sam (Karen Gillan) as her latest assignment has some unfortunate side effects, leading her to take on a reparation job to retrieve some missing cash for the local branch of the Irish Mob. The only catch is that a group of thugs have kidnapped the original thief’s little girl, 12 year-old Emily (My Spy’s Chloe Coleman), and Sam, in an uncharacteristic moment of sympathy, decides to intervene, only for the money to be accidentally destroyed in the process. Now she’s got the Mob and her own employers coming after her, and she not only has to save her own skin but also Emily’s, leading her to seek help from the one person she thought she might never see again – her mother, Scarlet (Lena Headey), a master assassin in her own right who’s been hiding from the Mob herself for years. The plot may be simple but at times also a little over-the-top, but the film is never anything less than a pure, unadulterated pleasure, populated with fascinating, living and breathing characters of real complexity and nuance, while the script (co-written by relative newcomer Ehud Lavski) is tightly-reined and bursting with zingers. Most importantly, though, Papushado really delivers on the action front – these are some of the best set-pieces I’ve seen this year, Gillan, her co-stars and the various stunt-performers acquitting themselves admirably in a series of spectacular fights, gun battles and a particularly imaginative car chase that would be the envy of many larger, more expensive productions. Gillan and Coleman have a sweet, awkward chemistry, the MCU star particularly impressing in a subtly nuanced performance that also plays beautifully against Headey’s own tightly controlled turn, while there is awesome support from Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh and Carla Gugino as Sam’s adoptive aunts Anna May, Florence and Madeleine, a trio of “librarians” who run a fine side-line in illicit weaponry and are capable of unleashing some spectacular violence of their own; the film’s antagonists, on the other hand, are exclusively masculine – the mighty Ralph Inneson is quietly ruthless as Irish boss Jim McAlester, while The Terror’s Adam Nagaitis is considerably more mercurial as his mad dog nephew Virgil, and Paul Giamatti is the stately calm at the centre of the storm as Sam’s employer Nathan, the closest thing she has to a father. There’s so much to enjoy in this movie, not just the wonderful characters and amazing action but also the singularly engrossing and idiosyncratic style, deeply affecting themes of the bonds of found family and the healing power of forgiveness, and a rewarding through-line of strong women triumphing against the brutalities of toxic masculinity. I love this film, and I invite you to try it out, cuz I’m sure you will too.

2. THE SUICIDE SQUAD – the most fun I’ve had at the cinema so far this year is the long-awaited (thanks a bunch, COVID) redress of another frustrating imbalance from the decidedly hit and miss DCEU superhero franchise, in which Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director James Gunn has finally delivered a PROPER Suicide Squad movie after David Ayer’s painfully compromised first stab at the property back in 2016. That movie was enjoyable enough and had some great moments, but ultimately it was a clunky mess, and while some of the characters were done (quite) well, others were painfully botched, even ruined entirely. Thankfully Warner Bros. clearly learned their lesson, giving Gunn free reign to do whatever he wanted, and the end result is about as close to perfect as the DCEU has come to date. Once again the peerless Viola Davis plays US government official Amanda Waller, head of ARGUS and the undisputable most evil bitch in all the DC Universe, who presides over the metahuman prisoners of the notorious supermax Belle Reve Prison, cherry-picking inmates for her pet project Taskforce X, the titular Suicide Squad sent out to handle the kind of jobs nobody else wants, in exchange for years off their sentences but controlled by explosive implants injected into the base of their skulls. Their latest mission sees another motley crew of D-bags dispatched to the fictional South African island nation of Corto Maltese to infiltrate Jotunheim, a former Nazi facility in which a dangerous extra-terrestrial entity that’s being developed into a fearful bioweapon, with orders to destroy the project in order to keep it out of the hands of a hostile anti-American regime which has taken control of the island through a violent coup. Where the first Squad felt like a clumsily-arranged selection of stereotypes with a few genuinely promising characters unsuccessfully moulded into a decidedly forced found family, this new batch are convincingly organic – they may be dysfunctional and they’re all almost universally definitely BAD GUYS, but they WORK, the relationship dynamics that form between them feeling genuinely earned. Gunn has already proven himself a master of putting a bunch of A-holes together and forging them into band of “heroes”, and he’s certainly pulled the job off again here, dredging the bottom of the DC Rogues Gallery for its most ridiculous Z-listers and somehow managing to make them compelling. Sure, returning Squad-member Harley Quinn (the incomparable Margot Robbie, magnificent as ever) has already become a fully-realised character thanks to Birds of Prey, so there wasn’t much heavy-lifting to be done here, but Gunn genuinely seems to GET the character, so our favourite pixie-esque Agent of Chaos is an unbridled and thoroughly unpredictable joy here, while fellow veteran Colonel Rick Flagg (a particularly muscular and thoroughly game Joel Kinnaman) has this time received a much needed makeover, Gunn promoting him from being the first film’s sketchily-drawn “Captain Exposition” and turning him into a fully-ledged, well-thought-out human being with all the requisite baggage, including a newfound sense of humour; the newcomers, meanwhile, are a thoroughly fascinating bunch – reluctant “leader” Bloodsport/Robert DuBois (a typically robust and playful Idris Elba), unapologetic douchebag Peacemaker/Christopher Smith (probably the best performance I’ve EVER seen John Cena deliver), and socially awkward and seriously hard-done-by nerd (and by far the most idiotic DC villain of all time) the Polka-Dot Man/Abner Krill (a genuinely heart-breaking hangdog performance from Ant-Man’s David Dastmalchian); meanwhile there’s a fine trio of villainous turns from the film’s resident Big Bads, with Juan Diego Botta (Good Behaviour) and Joaquin Cosio (Quantum of Solace, Narcos: Mexico) making strong impressions as newly-installed dictator Silvio Luna and his corrupt right hand-man General Suarez, although both are EASILY eclipsed by the typically brilliant Peter Capaldi as louche and quietly deranged supervillain The Thinker/Gaius Greives (although the film’s ULTIMATE threat turns out to be something a whole lot bigger and more exotic). The film is ROUNDLY STOLEN, however, by a truly adorable double act (or TRIPLE act, if you want to get technical) – Daniella Melchior makes her breakthrough here in fine style as sweet, principled and kind-hearted narcoleptic second-generation supervillain Ratcatcher II/Cleo Cazo, who has the weird ability to control rats (and who has a pet rat named Sebastian who frequently steals scenes all on his own), while a particular fan-favourite B-lister makes his big screen debut here in the form of King Shark/Nanaue, a barely sentient anthropomorphic Great White “shark god” with an insatiable appetite for flesh and a naturally quizzical nature who was brilliantly mo-capped by Steve Agee (The Sarah Silverman Project, who also plays Waller’s hyperactive assistant John Economos) but then artfully completed with an ingenious vocal turn from Sylvester Stallone. James Gunn has crafted an absolute MASTERPIECE here, EASILY the best film he’s made to date, a riotous cavalcade of exquisitely observed and perfectly delivered dark humour and expertly wrangled narrative chaos that has great fun playing with the narrative flow, injects countless spot-on in-jokes and irreverent but utterly essential throwaway sight-gags, and totally endears us to this glorious gang of utter morons right from the start (in which Gunn delivers what has to be one of the most skilful deep-fakes in cinematic history). Sure, there’s also plenty of action, and it’s executed with the kind of consummate skill we’ve now come to expect from Gunn (the absolute highlight is a wonderfully bonkers sequence in which Harley expertly rescues herself from captivity), but like everything else it’s predominantly played for laughs, and there’s no getting away from the fact that this film is an absolute RIOT. By far the funniest thing I’ve seen so far this year, and if I’m honest this is the best of the DCEU offerings to date, too (for me, only the exceptional Birds of Prey can compare) – if Warner Bros. have any sense they’ll give Gunn more to do VERY SOON …

1. A QUIET PLACE, PART II – while UK cinemas finally reopened in early May, I was determined that my first trip back to the Big Screen for 2021 was gonna be something SPECIAL, and indeed I already knew what that was going to be. Thankfully I was not disappointed by my choice – 2018’s A Quiet Place was MY VERY FAVOURITE horror movie of the 2010s, an undeniable masterclass in suspense and sustained screen terror wrapped around a refreshingly original killer concept, and I was among the many fans hoping we’d see more in the future, especially after the film’s teasingly open ending. Against the odds (or perhaps not), writer-director/co-star John Krasinski has pulled off the seemingly impossible task of not only following up that high-wire act, but genuinely EQUALLING it in levels of quality – picking up RIGHT where the first film left off (at least after an AMAZING scene-setting opening in which we’re treated to the events of Day 1 of the downfall of humanity), rejoining the remnants of the Abbott family as they’re forced by circumstances to up-sticks from their idyllic farmhouse home and strike out into the outside world once more, painfully aware at all times that they must maintain perfect silence to avoid the ravenous attentions of the lethal blind alien beasties that now sit at the top of the food chain. Circumstances quickly become dire, however, and embattled mother Evelyn (Emily Blunt) is forced to ally herself with estranged family friend Emmett (Cillian Murphy), now a haunted, desperate vagrant eking out a perilous existence in an abandoned factory, in order to safeguard the future of her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds), Marcus (Noah Jupe) and their newborn baby brother. Regan, however, discovers evidence of more survivors, and with her newfound weapon against the aliens she recklessly decides to set off on her own in the hopes of aiding them before it’s too late … it may only be his second major blockbuster as a director, but Krasinski has once again proven he’s a true heavyweight talent, effortlessly carving out fresh ground in this already magnificently well-realised dystopian universe while also playing magnificently to the established strengths of what came before, delivering another peerless thrill-ride of unbearable tension and knuckle-whitening terror. The central principle of utilising sound at a very strict premium is once again strictly adhered to here, available sources of dialogue once again exploited with consummate skill while sound design and score (another moody triumph from Marco Beltrami) again become THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of the whole production. The ruined world is once again realised beautifully throughout, most notably in the nightmarish environment of a wrecked commuter train, and Krasinski cranks up the tension before unleashing it in merciless explosions in a selection of harrowing encounters which guaranteed to leave viewers in a puddle of sweat. The director mostly stays behind the camera this time round, but he does (obviously) put in an appearance in the opening flashback as the late Lee Abbott, making a potent impression which leaves a haunting absence that’s keenly felt throughout the remainder of the film, while Blunt continues to display mother lion ferocity as she fights to keep her children safe and Jupe plays crippling fear magnificently but is now starting to show a hidden spine of steel as Marcus finally starts to find his courage; the film once again belongs, however, to Simmonds, the young deaf actress once and for all proving she’s a genuine star in the making as she invests Regan with fierce wilfulness and stubborn determination that remains unshakeable even in the face of unspeakable horrors, and the relationship she develops with Emmett, reluctant as it may be, provides a strong new emotional focus for the story, Murphy bringing an attractive wounded humanity to his role as a man who’s lost anything and is being forced to learn to care for something again. This is another triumph of the genre AND the artform in general, a masterpiece of atmosphere, performance and storytelling which builds magnificently on the skilful foundations laid by the first film, as well as setting things up perfectly for a third instalment which is all but certain to follow. I definitely can’t wait.

#movies 2021 #werewolves within #werewolves within movie #the tomorrow war #army of the dead #Black Widow #black widow movie #black widow mcu #wrath of man #fear street #fear street trilogy #fear street movies #The Sparks Brothers #gunpowder milkshake #the suicide squad #a quiet place part ii #a quiet place part 2 #awesome sauce

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aurorawest · 4 years

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"More about his kinks? His rich history of sexual assault and how that messes with him? His hang-ups around physical attraction and emotional attraction? Something else that I’m forgetting to list?" ALL OF THE ABOVE! Seriously, if you wrote an essay on each topic I'd def read it, LOL, I'm so on board 🥳

I’m so sorry for taking forever to answer these. I felt like I wasn’t really giving the topic the due it deserved—I still think I could say more, and say it better, but here’s what I’ve got for now!

TW for talk about general sex stuff and sexual assault.

Section 1: Who is Loki attracted to?

Loki is bi/pan (not a label he would apply to himself, but I’m going to use it as shorthand). This is something he’s known about himself since his early adolescence. He probably was more aware of being attracted to women, just because, you know, heteronormativity. I head canon that queerness wasn’t totally accepted on Asgard when he was young, but there was a wide range of opinion and there were certainly many people that were totally accepting (amongst them, his family). And by the time of the MCU timeline, my hc is that attitudes are largely accepting. So young Loki is aware he’s attracted to men, and he’s willing to pursue that, but he’s still nervous about making it widely known. A lot of that is tied up with not feeling like it’s Asgardian enough, it’s not the kind of masculinity that Asgardians seem to prize.

My personal head canon is that Loki has been attracted to more men than women.

Section 2: When is he attracted to them?

I sometimes think that I sort of head canon Loki as demisexual (again, not a term he’d use). I see Loki’s libido becoming further and further separated from his capacity for emotional intimacy as he gets older. He gets to a point where he almost never feels attracted to someone unless he’s got that emotional connection...but he doesn’t like admitting to an emotional connection. So he’ll be like, ‘Oh, I just think he’s hot, no biggie. He just pops up in my sexual fantasies all the time, exclusively actually, and I regularly get off to the thought of him undressing—but it’s just physical! I don’t actually like him!” Like he’s fully aware that for other people, this is a thing that can be true. But it’s not true for him. In order for him to be really sexually attracted to someone, he has to have that emotional bond. Which again, he’ll deny. It’s a really healthy emotional cycle.

Section 3: Idk if it’s really sexuality but his genderfluidity

So again, I don’t think genderfluid is a term Loki would use to describe himself, and I also don’t think it’s quite the right word to use to describe what he is (just my personal hc, I of course do not have any issue at all with other people using the term to describe him). I definitely have Loki’s shapeshifting as part of his character, though I write him in his male form 95% of the time for a number of reasons, some of them related to canon, some of them more as a personal response to fanon. That’s out of scope for this ask, haha. I write him as identifying as male in his male form and female in her female form.

Section 4: Compartmentalization of sex as separate from emotional intimacy

Loki views sex, and his body, as a commodity. It’s another tool in his arsenal. He sees it as diplomacy, as a way to get what he wants, to save his life, whatever. He can and will use sex as a bargaining chip.

It’s maybe as a result of this, or maybe the other way around, that Loki doesn’t really feel sexual attraction to people unless he’s already got an emotional connection. He’s completely compartmentalized these two aspects of intimacy, to the point where he really fears the emotional intimacy that would lead to him feeling actual sexual attraction. Because he sees sex and sexual attraction as something he can control, it’s the less scary of the two. So sex is preferable to love. With sex, he can be in control (or tell himself he’s in control) of the situation, in the sense that he has consented to it in some way. But love? He didn’t consent to that. He doesn’t want to feel that. He can’t stop himself from feeling it and he can’t control who he feels it for.

Section 5: Sub/Dom?

I covered this in an earlier ask but I might as well talk about it again! My Loki is very very sexually submissive most of the time. Likes being put in his place, controlled, held down, told what to do, etc etc. He can be dominant sometimes, if the mood strikes him, but his preference is to be submissive.

Related to his nervousness around coming out, Loki very much felt like as the prince, as an Asgardian Man, there was like...a right way to have sex. If he was going to have sex with men, he was going to top. Only top. And he was going to be dominant about it. He had to be in charge, even though this really didn’t come naturally to him. So in his early sexual encounters, that’s what he did, even though it wasn’t what he wanted. This led to him having a lot of unsatisfactory sex as a young man, haha.

He also spent a decent portion of his life being ashamed of the kind of things that turn him on, because again, he thinks it’s bad optics for who he is.

Section 6: Kinks

My Loki isn’t Kinky™, he’s actually pretty vanilla. His favorite position is getting it from behind, and his second favorite position is missionary, and if he only did those two things for the rest of his life, he wouldn’t have a problem with it. He does, however, have kinks, and they are: authority and humiliation. This is kind of where the ‘very very’ comes from in ‘very very sexually submissive,’ ha. He likes feeling degraded, he likes being ordered around. Dirty talk is good, and preferably he’s being told about how bad he’s being and how he needs to be punished.

Caveat with this, which leads into my next point: he only really likes it if it’s with someone he loves. Because...

Section 7: Those kinks have fucked him up!

So part of me can’t help but think that the reason I see Loki with an authority kink is because of his daddy issues, haha. He pretty clearly has a deep need to please his father (not sexually, ew), and I think he then ends up being drawn to powerful authority figures. Thanos and the Grandmaster come to mind. I don’t head canon that anything sexual went on with Thanos (though I could be pretty easily persuaded to write some fucked up fic about it happening), but I absolutely head canon that stuff went on with the Grandmaster.

My head canon is that the Grandmaster was trying to get into Loki’s pants pretty much from the moment Loki showed up in front of him—constantly flirting, way too handsy, orgy invitations, parties with drugged drinks, the whole shebang. Loki was able to get away with not actually having sex with him, though, and always holding it out as a possibility in order to stay in the Grandmaster’s good graces. But when Thor and the Hulk fight in the arena, Loki offers sex in exchange for Thor’s life being spared (I have a fic about this, it’s called Lacuna). The sex is...not good for Loki. There’s definitely BDSM involved, and he is not into that. The Grandmaster rapes him. Repeatedly.

And...Loki is into humiliation and authority. So when he’s degraded and humiliated by the Grandmaster, and he gets off, he goes into this shame feedback loop. This is the kind of thing he likes, and if he likes it then there’s nothing wrong with what happened to him, and he put himself in the position anyway, and if he climaxed then it wasn’t assault, etc etc. He gets this way about non-sexual situations as well; like he definitely feels he deserved what he got with Thanos, and that he deserved to die on Svartalfheim because he feels responsible for Frigga’s death. He has this way of pushing blame off himself and never taking responsibility for his actions...until he does, and then he blames himself for everything.

Section 8: Yes I head canon Loki has a rich history of sexual assault

Oof, guys, Loki has been assaulted so many times in my head canon. His first experience was as an adolescent, where he almost gets gang-raped by two security guards. There were definitely other dubious to nonconsensual experiences in pre-Thor 1 times.

There are some traumatic times after his Fall:

He does some time at the Kiln, and he allows a prison guard to pretty much do whatever he wants to Loki. Loki uses this to escape.

Eventually, Loki ends up getting captured and sold into slavery. He ends up in a sex trafficking market, where he’s raped repeatedly, including gang-raped. He’s heavily drugged during this time to keep him from escaping but still has some memories of it. This is where the Black Order picks him up. They repeatedly remind him that they ‘saved’ him.

Then, of course, there’s the aforementioned stuff with the Grandmaster.

Section 9: Not that he'll ever call it that

Oh yeah but Loki will never in a million years call any of this ‘rape.’ In almost every assault, he’ll tell himself that he actually never said no, so actually, he was in control. He could have stopped it, but he just didn’t, because of Reasons. So it’s not rape. He had it under control. He did. Seriously. There’s no trauma.

He just tries not to think about the time in the sex trafficking market because he can’t really contort that into anything but what it was. If he has to think about it, usually he figures he deserved it.

I mentioned this in an ask recently, where I think one of Loki’s deepest fears is losing control. I think he really fears losing control over a situation, but his biggest fear is losing control over himself. In my hc, Loki really feels as though his grasp on his sense of self is tenuous at best; that he isn’t in control of his own mind (hello, Mind Stone, you didn’t help); that he might just do something that he didn’t plan or want to do. You know that feeling you get where you look at a window and think, What if I just jumped out? Loki really, really fears that feeling, because he’s not sure he can stop himself from actually following through. And stripping him of his bodily autonomy with sexual assault is just another way to fuck him up. Having him deny what it is because he’s so terrified of losing control adds a delicious layer of toxicity to the whole brew.

Section 10: But I still think he's capable of finding The One and having a great sex life and an unbreakable emotional bond

Having said that! Loki’s sexual trauma doesn’t actually hamper his ability to have sex. It does hamper his ability to fall in love, because falling in love is another form of losing control. I think that he could definitely get triggered by certain sexual things, but of course, I write him with Stephen, who is basically the kindest, most considerate lover ever, haha. I talked in another ask about how Loki’s humiliation and authority kinks, coupled with his lack of communication skills, lead him to expect Stephen to be a mindreader, and to just kind of...do the stuff that Loki wants him to do. But of course, Stephen isn’t going to do something that could actually cause Loki physical pain without being explicitly told to do so and receiving Loki’s enthusiastic consent. But Loki doesn’t want to communicate! Loki thinks it’s hot to just get ravaged.

My fic is about a lot of this stuff, not necessarily explicitly the sexual stuff, but a lot of the issues that are bound up with it—the control issues, the attraction to authority figures, the difficulty forming emotional bonds. Through the course of my main series, Loki is really picking away at getting better about all of this, and the endgame, of course, is that he’s able to accept being loved, and loving in return.

I feel like I didn’t articulate any of this as well as I wanted to, but I didn’t want to let this ask sit in my inbox forever, and I’ve been picking away at this now for like two weeks. So, I hope that was a satisfying essay! I could probably go on tbh, but I’ll leave it at this.

#loki head canon #loki sexuality #loki meta #loki #Anonymous

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thebeauregardbros · 4 years

Text

“The Ultimate Character Questionnaire”: Alus Beauregard

a fuckton of random questions abt alus ramblingly answered

questions stolen from [here]. i cut out ones that ask the same questions i accidentally answered prior, or just didn’t interest me enough to answer, so if you wanna do this for your own OC I recommend copy+pasting it from the source!

Basic Character Questions

First name? Alus (pronounced ‘Ah-Loose’)

Surname? Beauregard (taken from adoptive father)

Nicknames? Alus wants to be called “Al” but it doesn’t stick because his name is already short. Lots of people unfortunately call him Alice. he does not like that

Date of birth? unknown but he celebrates his birthday on All Saint’s Wake (aka Halloween)

Age? Funfact: Alus and Arc’s age is the age between the RPers’ real-world ages (I’m 24, Arc’s player is 25, but for a brief period Arc’s player becomes 26 while I’m still 24.) So they’re going to be 25 this year (2020)... what the fuck. stop growing. dont do that.

Physical / Appearance

Height? I... he’s tall. Despite Alus being the max height for Miqo’te characters (5′8″/173cm), other male Miqo’te RPers say their characters are taller than that anyway, so I’m like.. not sure what to answer. I don’t want to break reasonable canon of what’s possible for Miqo’te but I also don’t want him to be short or average sized in comparison to other average Miqo’te. I’m just gonna say, definitively, “Alus is tall for a Miqo’te”. If you have a tall Miqo, Alus is just as tall. Or half an inch taller. Take that as whatever you want. I’m tired.

Weight? I... don’t know? This question really doesn’t clarify anything to me; people can be the same height and weight and look totally different in body type. If you absolutely had to get an answer from me, my best guess is maybe somewhere between 170lbs-180lbs? (assuming he is 5′8″)

Build? Wide shoulders, slender hips, long legs, big wide chest and a nice strong core. He is muscular; burly and brawny; his body type feels intimidating and large. He has a healthy amount of fat over his muscles, but still has much clearly visible muscle especially while flexing.

Hair colour? Golden blonde; it’s got a subtle yellow-ish tone that reminds you of sunshine.

Hair style? Alus’ hair is naturally thick and wavy. His hair is grown out long; about armpit length. His hair is choppy, even somewhat feathered. It’s a bit badly damaged from years on the road, but the split ends and fly-aways sparkle brilliantly in the sunlight like a messy halo around his head. His hair naturally very poofy, like damaged 80s hair. Long bangs that were once pushed back fall gracefully over his face like a wild child running about in spring. Whilst resting away from work, he braids it loosely.

Eye colour? Heterochromia; A raspberry red in one pupil, and a sun-shiny yellow-orange in the other.

Eye Shape? Thin and serious, and slightly down-turned. Small double-lid.

Glasses or contact lenses? His eyes are overall pretty healthy, but he’s slightly far-sighted. He uses glasses once in awhile to read, but they’re not super necessary.

Distinguishing facial features? Heterochromia and his adult male Miqo’te markings. He tends to wear purple eyeshadow around his eyes and a subtle purple lip tint.

Which facial feature is most prominent? The facial structure of Alus more resembles an Elezen than a typical Miqo’te; he has a long slender nose, a oval face shape and noticeably high cheekbones.

Which bodily feature is most prominent? Alus’ lion-like tail is somewhat unique among other typical Miqo’te.

Other distinguishing features? His style of dress tends to stand out in a crowd; he favors pure white and soft pastels over more popular color tones among adventurers like blacks and greys. Also unlike the typical adventurer, he is more want to wear fabrics of the fancy and soft nobleman, decked out in frills and lace like a prince locked far away in a chamber more than any man on a dusty and bloody battlefield.

Skin? Uh... a... “medium tan” skintone? (again I have no idea how tf I’m supposed to figure out labels for skin tones when there’s no widely used phrases for specific tones fghdjkgh) with a “warm gold undertone”. The small amount of skin that’s ever exposed upon him is surprisingly soft, as if he never did much hard work in his life. [SPOILER]Underneath his clothes, however...The countless scars upon his torso, back, legs and upper-arms are rough and hard, like treated leather.[/SPOILER]

Birthmarks? Not that he knows of. He has lots of scars from messing around in his childhood but he can’t remember the origin of them all. Any of them could be birth marks as far as he can tell.

Tattoos? None! And he never plans to get one. He has yet to see any tattoos that match his personal aesthetics of what he’d put on his body yet and even if he did, he can’t imagine liking them enough to want to get one.

Physical handicaps? [SPOILER]Numbness in various small patches of skin throughout his body.[SPOILER]

Type of clothes? I already answered this somewhat but if you’re curious about specifics, I made [this pinterest] of stuff I’d imagine he’d wear. Pretty much just take the “aristocrat” Japanese street fashion genre and turn it white, and give it a bit of a gold trim. Lots of frills and lace; heavily inspired by fantastical shoujo manga glorified depictions of what a Prince Charming looks like in medieval setting fairy tales.

How do they wear their clothes? Some (not all) of the specific guidelines I have in my head of what his wardrobe’s like; Colors are only pastels, white, or gold - once in a blue moon he might wear a rich dark raspberry red color or bright orange or yellow. He will NEVER wear grey or black. Pants have to be long enough to reach the ankles. He prefers wearing his shirts tucked-in. Clothes MUST fully cover everything on his body excluding head, neck, and hands at all times - low neckline acceptable in off-duty time. Under special occasions only (ie beachware); lower arms, top of feet or shins can be uncovered. He wears a lot of jabot ties.

What are their feet like? (type of shoes, state of shoes, socks, feet, pristine, dirty, worn, etc) Alus takes his quality of fashion seriously. He’s the type of guy who wears expensive fancy soft white socks trimmed with gold nobody will ever see with the little suspenders on his legs to keep the socks from sagging down. He adores wearing white pointed dress shoes, especially if they have a bit of a high heel. Gold jewelry or buckles are lovely, and any shoe with lace, bows, ribbons, fancy beadwork or faux flowers are supreme. (Google image search ‘Bridal Boots’ if you wanna see his shoes. He’d seriously wear any of them.)

Race / Ethnicity? hhhhhhhhh it’s 5am man I dont have the energy to google faces until i find a reasonable faceclaim and try to figure out that person’s ethnicity... they’re Fantasy Characters... alus is a miqo’te.. maybe had some elezen or hyur in his lineage? idk

Mannerisms? Alus is like a living embodiment of a cartoon Disney prince. I don’t know how to better describe it; He’s elegant and gentle for the most part but can also so comically stiff you could mistake him for an automaton or a piece of background cardboard - then when the moment hits, he can spring into an unrealistic slapstick looney toon nightmare. He always seems to be in a constant state of floating between elegance, stiffness, and slapstick. There is never a break. There is never an in-between.

Are they in good health? For their active life circumstances of constant physical hardship, they are in amazingly good health.

Do they have any disabilities? I don’t think of ADHD as a disability (and I’m saying that as someone who has autism and most likely ADD or ADHD myself) but it’s classified by a lot of people as a disability. So yeah, uh, Alus absolutely has ADHD.

Personality

Are they more optimistic or pessimistic? Definitely more optimistic, sometimes to a fault. I think there’s a degree of choice in there but he’s kinda lost the boundary between blind trust and trying to believe in people and situations because he morally wants to. He is still a worry wart, and that is what causes him to fight so hard as he does for making things around him better as well as making himself better - but I think he makes a very active effort of not letting anyone see that part of him, maybe in an effort to convince himself as well that everything is and will be okay.

Are they introverted or extroverted? Extroverted in a lot of ways and introverted in others. Alus loves and thrives around people, and I think he’s a bit more drained than the average person when he’s alone vs. being in a crowd, but he’s still living more as an introvert - one-on-one deep talks can make him extremely anxious. He’s great at the surface niceties but can often find himself too devoted to strangers, which leads him into trouble sometimes. He’s like a really great social co-worker and a extremely awkward off-duty member of society that doesn’t really know how to function or navigate normal relationships.

Do they ever put on airs? A b s o l u t e l y. Alus’ entire persona is carefully hand-crafted over a lifetime. It’s not to say “This isn’t who he really is, he’s a liar”, but moreso “He’s not quite the person he wishes he was yet.” He makes a really large effort to put on airs of this confident and beautiful Princely type of heroic figure straight out of a fairy tale where he simultaneously knows that such a goal is impossible, since this isn’t a story book - this is real life, he is flawed and complicated, and nothing is as perfect as you wish it was. But he keeps trying no matter what.

What bad habits do they have? Low-key bullying his brother, for sure. Arc is the only person Alus just can’t really put on airs with so his perfect image just breaks down around him. While Alus appears to be a very gentle and kind individual around other people, he’ll comically slap and roast his brother without mercy. (Don’t worry; it’s mutual between them.)

What makes them laugh out loud? Almost anything. Alus is definitely a big giggler, and an even bigger loud spontaneous laugher.

How do they display affection? There’s two major levels of it. First, it’s showering you with little gifts - sweets, flowers, even money if you’re in need, with nothing asked in return. If you’re very close to him, it’s skinship; he loves spontaneously hugging others and holding hands and all that kinda platonic stuff. He’ll pretty much not let go of your arm if you’re around him. He also loves dancing with people, you bet he’ll do the whole nine yards of weaving you around him, lifting you above his head and dipping you.

Mental handicaps? Hates being touched. He has some really bad memories of being manhandled and despises any type of physical restriction on himself, especially from people he doesn’t find VERY close to him. He hates even more to be seen in casual clothes, especially clothes that expose his skin. He’s really not a fan of his exposed body and it’s gonna take a lot for him to get over it. He’s slowly getting better but it’s a long journey.

How do they want to be seen by others? Someone to look up to; someone to rely on. He wants to be the hope for humanity, essentially. He wants to inspire others to heroism and kindness just by seeing him, and he wants to make the world a better place just by existing in it.

How do they see themselves? Someone who’s just not good enough; Someone who needs to keep working to be better; someone who’s chosen destiny is to be the hero of humanity.

How are they seen by others? Probably as a weirdo. He definitely comes off as eccentric; his strange comedic ramblings and sudden dancing mid-conversation, as well as his random gifts and bag full of pranks, magic tricks and fireworks just really feel off-the-wall. His immediate devotion to others may also come off as exceedingly suspicious. I think how he dresses and his cafe also indicate he’s kind of the ‘rich unhinged guy’ stereotype. People who know him well though know that he’s an extremely good person who would give you the clothes off his back if you needed them more. He loves humanity and would do anything for it.

Strongest character trait? His stubborn devotion to his ideals, for sure. If he wants something, he’ll work his hardest to make sure it happens.

Weakest character trait? Far too trusting of strangers; he gets taken advantage of very easily, and he’s almost always happy to come back for more. He’ll even give the biggest villain a 2nd and 3rd and 4th chance. His inability to condemn anyone as truly evil may cause far more hardship for everyone in the long run than if he just chose to kill the person or lock them up indefinitely and be done with it.

How competitive are they? Alus thrives in competitive environments due to an absolute love and adoration for sportsmanship. He does a fantastic job making his competitors have fun and feels that a competition that is too one-sided doesn’t have any fun or worth. He loves difficult competition because he feels that it helps better himself and his rival.

Do they make snap judgements or take time to consider? Oh, he’s absolutely a “strike now while the iron’s hot” type of a guy. He knows that even a second of a wait can change things for the worse. He’s also definitely a philosophical type that thinks over every possible scenario in his mind in his off-time, but ultimately, he’ll always be the one running off to get things done as soon as they’re brought to his attention. He’s the opposite of his brother, who wants to slow things down before making rash decisions. Alus just knows those decisions need to be made, so it might as well be now, so he just gets it done and worries about the outcome later.

How do they react to praise? He’s actually probably never used to it. I think he has a bit of a low self-esteem problem in how he sees himself as never quite as good as he wants himself to be, so praise can catch him off-guard pretty easily. He’ll cover that up by clumsily stating something comically over-the-top like “Of course, I am incredible! I am the best! Mwahahaha!” but not before gasping for air and stuttering like a shy schoolgirl first.

How do they react to criticism? He has a great ability to deflect toxicity into positivity; he asks what people mean and tries to understand them. I think if the criticism can be taken as constructive, he’s always happy to take it. If the criticism is just plain mean, I think he’ll ask if there’s anything he can do to help the person he’s talking to - he knows nobody would say such mean things to another unless they were having a pretty bad day.

What is their greatest fear? Oh, y’know. Losing his brother. Slugs and slimy things. If you wanna get painful and philosophical about it, I think he’s terrified of the future. He tries to live in the moment and just do the best he can at all times, but when he sees that what he does doesn’t help a lot of the world to stay safe, it freaks him out. In his mind, he’s doing a lot, but in reality - it’s not much at the grand scheme of things. He tries not to think about it too much. He tries not to think much of the past either - of all the mistakes, of what he could and couldn’t have done. It frustrates him. I guess you could say his greatest fear is his own limits. It never feels like he’s doing enough, or even if he ever could do enough.

What are their biggest secrets? [SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY] Alus is absolutely disgusted with the military powers of the world, and the politicians. He tries to stay optimistic and bright on the outside - he stays useful and does what he can without complaint, he tries to lie to himself and say it isn’t too bad, tries to focus on the good these systems do, to be placated and trust his brother that things will work out alright in this setup - but he sincerely wishes that somehow they could be abolished entirely. He’s frustrated with the idea of any one person or power having control over the lives of others - people those single powers may never meet - will inevitably cause a lack of humanity and understanding of others. Nobody should have this power, not even him, not even the gods. As Alus’ writer, I don’t think he knows a good alternative, he just knows he’s seen enough immoral and inconsiderate shitfuckery in these systems that he can barely stand it anymore. I think many soldiers probably feel like this eventually. [/SPOILER]

What is their philosophy of life? literally just look at the [quote insp tag]

When was the last time they cried? I FEEL LIKE ALUS IS THE TYPE TO TEAR UP AT EXTREMELY COMMON SHIT TBH?? EVERYTHING IS SO BEAUTIFUL I STARTED CRYING TYPE??

What haunts them? [SPOILER]Literally just... becoming a soldier or a fighter to begin with. He wishes it never happened, he wishes the world didn’t need fighting to begin with. But he knows he can never go back now, and even if he did, he’d probably still become a soldier all over again. It’s all he can do in this violent, terrible world.[/SPOILER]

What are their political views? Notable traits would supporting equality rights for Beastmen, more funding towards helping refugees, more funding to adoption agencies and orphanages, more transparency about tax profit and spending, creating opportunities for different countries to share their culture.. etc. (Note: I like to believe that larger glaring IRL political issues like lack of LGBTQ+ rights, gender inequality, ableism, skin-color-based racism and other large current inhumane social problems aren’t problems in FFXIV’s universe. If your RP character uses bigotry in accurate line of these IRL social issues as a character trait, you are not welcome in my RP circle. Period.)

What will they stand up for? He hates violence in general, so he’ll do whatever he can to stop it. Anyone who seems to be controlling or keeping other people against their will is something he loathes. No means no!

Who do they quote? Urianger. like a lot. Probably mostly accidentally; he picks up a lot of vocal mannerisms from the guy.

Are they indoorsy or outdoorsy? Outdoorsy, for sure. He grew up under the stars and being forced indoors for a long time will probably give him feelings of anxiousness and claustrophobia, especially if the space is small. He has had some bad experiences being unable to go outside so he takes his freedom to roam outdoors very seriously.

What is their sinful little habit? He loves sweets. This guy is all about boasting a healthy diet, but his weakness shows the exact opposite. More serious answer: He tends to procrastinate bad, especially when it comes to his passive military duties.

How do they treat people better than them? If they breathe, they’re royalty. Utmost respect and courtesy. Treats them as if he’s the royal butler to their fancy ass selves, even if they’re the lowest of the low in poverty.

How do they treat people worse than them? Honestly? Pretty much the same answer as above. If he gets truly angry at someone, he’ll tell them how and why straight-up, but he’ll never stop giving them the respect and courtesy he believes every human being deserves.

What quality do they most value in a friend? Someone who is as ridiculously open-hearted and ready to confess love to the nearest person along with anything else in the world as Alus tends to do, but also someone who pays close enough attention to him that they can tell when he’s in distress. Alus has a hard time speaking up about when he feels uncomfortable, so someone who has a talent for empathy - detecting other peoples’ emotions - would be incredibly invaluable. That’s the fastest way to his heart.

What do they consider an overrated virtue? None, and all. He thinks that if anyone gets carried away with any traditional virtue to the point that they’re causing evil in the world, they’re just misguided. He understands that - or at least actively wants to understand that - so he can forgive.

If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be? He... honestly thinks of himself as more of an Elezen than a Miqo’te. So anything that ‘gives away’ that he’s a Miqo’te, he could probably do without. He likes his ears and his tail though! But maybe if he was taller? lmao. (I don’t intend to ever Fantasia Alus FYI, MAYBE if male viera comes out and my partner agrees to it AND I have absolutely no active RP going on, but it’s very unlikely, and if it does happen it will be considered a retcon, not a character development)

What is their obsession? Definitely his aesthetics. He spends an incredibly large amount of time, effort, and money on making himself look and properly act like a “fairy tale prince charming”. It’s not only a philosophical mindset of being moral and heroic, but also being charming and supportive to everyone around himself. He honestly hopes and believes that if he succeeds in creating and upholding this image that every person who rests their eyes upon him will be filled with determination and hope that heroism and safety is real.

What are their pet peeves? He disapproves of the glorification of alcohol, smoking, or any other vices that are bad for the average person’s health. He won’t turn away the people with these vices as potential friends, but he’ll certainly be tempted to lecture them on it. He is also really not a fan of casual skinship between strangers, nor is he a fan of an aggressively pessimistic attitude, nor will he ever really be used to people who wear very little clothing (He isn’t disapproving of the sex industry or sex workers per say, he just doesn’t ‘get it’; he could never imagine himself in their shoes), nor is he a fan of other people trying to change him to be more chill about his aesthetic code (how he dresses, how he positively interacts with others, etc.) - but he tends to be more quiet about his dislike of these things. He tries to stay open minded and patient, but yeah, maybe it’ll take a bit longer to get to ‘close friend’ status with these things.

What are their idiosyncrasies? (special mannerisms?) His posture tends to be stiff as a board: too perfect, like some sort of breathing statue or mechanic humanoid, while at other times it’s as if a switch is flipped to make him become a crazy slapstick ragdoll. He tends to speak in a constant fluctuation of ‘ye olde English’ and common casual speech, and he keeps a few feet distance from people he isn’t especially close with at all times. He’s generous with money and far too trusting of strangers to the point it feels like an overblown parody of these traits. He’s painfully optimistic and takes compliments first with a moment of surprise before he adjusts his reaction with over-the-top narcissistic vigor. He’s a constantly faltering image of himself. He’s a walking symbolism of good-hearted chaos.

Friends and Family

Is their family big or small? Who does it consist of? The only people Alus regards as true family is his twin brother, Arc, and his late adoptive father, Gwenneg. There are other Beauregards in the world, and other great “found family”-esque friends yet to make, but Alus cannot imagine them ever meeting the kind of friendship and connection he has with his brother and had with his father. Perhaps he’s tried in the past, but it just never feels the same. He’s at the point he’s given up on the idea of it happening casually.

What is their perception of family? A close-knit group that is always there for eachother, practically living at eachother’s hips. The type of people you can just glance at and they can read your mind, and even if they disagree with you, they’ll go along with you and fix it later. They’re always up for improving eachother. They are essentially extensions of oneself, and like limbs, even if such is cut - it is carefully looked after and healed, the rest of the body worries and tries to better it, never blaming it’s limb for not being good enough. All part of one system.

Describe their best friend. Arc is undeniably Alus’ best friend. I feel a bit weird talking about my friend’s OC for them, but I will say this; Arc’s strengths are in his slow and strategic approach to things; his love of politics and ability to glide through them, the way he finds the best routes and setups in battle, the timing, everything down to the little tiniest details to turn a battle of either wits or blood - he thinks over all of it, something Alus lacks. And despite being much less prone to trust than the willingly naive Alus, he can find the good in just about anybody when it really comes down to it. Arc knows the dark side of this world and is constantly aware and remembering of it, but understands it’s still worth fighting for. He’s also got a pretty good fashion sense! He seems extremely shady when it comes to his bar business though... It seems to be played up as a joke, but you’re never quite sure as you’re talking to him about it.

Ideal best friend? In assumption this means ‘a best friend besides Arc’, I think Alus’ standards are low. Of course, he’d love to have someone who shares his basic interests of aesthetics and his moral philosophy that centralizes on a love for humanity, and the honor and strength of action to act on it, but he also wants to know someone who can teach him a lot. I think that type of person could be absolutely anyone, especially someone that is nothing like him. Alus doesn’t want to necessarily completely change himself through the journey of knowing anothers’ life, nor change someone else entirely either, even if it’s for the better. He just wants mutual understanding with others. He finds a joy that can be found nowhere else when he feels two people, who don’t have anything in common, can find a common ground. This kind of thing excites him. I think something in-between -- someone who is a lot like him in a lot of ways, but has a few traits he lacks completely -- is ideal for him.

Describe their other friends / Describe their acquaintances. (combo’d) Alus doesn’t really have other people he regards true friends, I think. He kinda regards every person he meets as his friends. That’s really all there is to it for him.

Do they have any pets? No pets, just a lot of animals that follow him around for food scraps and snacks. He always has an open window for birds and butterflies, and an open door to dodos and chickens and stray cats. He enjoys the company of birds the most, though he’s a fan of the loyal doggy too. In terms of his mounts - He mainly only claims ownership over his military-issued chocobo for paperwork purposes, but regards her as a friend without a voice more than an animal under his ownership.

Who are their natural allies? Anyone who agrees for humanitarian rights, I think. Alus just exists to be a hero, really.

Who are their surprising allies? People he once fought. He always reaches out a hand for people who’ve made mistakes and tells them that he’ll be their friend if they agree to stop their mean-spirited behavior.

Past and Future

What was your character like as a baby? As a child? Equal combination “good kid” and “absolute little shit”; On the surface, he’d always be loyal to his father and polite to strangers, but the second he and his brother got some time to themselves they’d get into all kinds of shenanigans - especially if they manage to find some way to conceal their identity. Most of those shenanigans were pranks trying to scare people with All Saint’s Wake-esque props. They were also a time they were absolutely not above purposely trying to confuse people on which brother was which whenever it was convenient or just funny.

Did they grow up rich or poor? Poor, but I think he still thought himself as lucky. He might not have had a big room to himself or a lot of possessions, but he got to travel the world and meet so many interesting people and see so many interesting things in his father’s caravan.

Did they grow up nurtured or neglected? Nurtured for sure. His family were joined at the hip.

What is the most offensive thing they ever said? I’m sure Alus used to have a potty mouth when he was a kid and young teen. He picked it up from being exposed to so many different individuals growing up. If he’s been around a lot of sailors in Lima Lominsa, I think it’s a safe bet that he probably swore like one too. After his father died that changed almost immediately though in order to honor his dad’s memory.

What is their greatest achievement? I’m sure there’s much more impressive individual achievements he has accomplished - monsters he’s fought, hostage situations he’s negotiated, villains he’s managed to persuade to become heroes, but if you asked him, he’d tell you that simply being lucky enough to be chosen to become one of the Warriors of Light or opening his cafe are the achievements he’s most proud of.

What was their first kiss like? [spoiler]Still haven’t had it![/spoiler]

What is the worst thing they did to someone they loved? I feel like even though Alus adored his father, he probably did a lot of things to make him worried or stressed out, maybe even ran away once or twice just for the fun of it. It was a lot more innocent time for Alus and I don’t think he’d do anything like that in adulthood.

What are their ambitions? Alus just wants to end all war. Full stop. It’s not that complicated. He doesn’t really know the most effective way how to, though. He just keeps doing whatever he can when people request his help - which usually ends up taking advantage of his physical combat skills.

What advice would they give their younger self? Cherish this time. Hug your father and tell him you love him more often. And maybe focus on being a medic or someone who helps the world peacefully more than someone who uses violence to solve the world’s problems. Maybe care a little more about politics.

What smells remind them of their childhood? Chamomile, road dust, seasalt, and old fancy dusty antiques.

What was their childhood ambition? To grow up to be a glamorous warrior that saves the world again and again and to rescue a pretty princess.

What is their best childhood memory? Dancing on the streets of Ul’dah with his brother for a little extra pocket money and becoming unexpectedly popular.

What is their worst childhood memory? Losing his father to the calamity and being passed between temporary foster homes again and again, then finally losing his brother in that mess, too.

Did they have an imaginary childhood friend? Alus left out honeyed milk for faeries all the time as a child. Post-calamity, he started to quietly make-believe that faeries and little unicorns visited him when he was particularly lonely or bored, or just wanted to escape his own mind for awhile.

When was the last time they were crushed with disappointment? [FFXIV POST-STORMBLOOD SPOILER]Hearing about Zenos’ body being revived against Zenos’ wishes for a perfect death.[/SPOILER]

What past act are they most ashamed of? Any time Alus can’t save someone from death. Sometimes, Alus must be the one to kill them himself. This is an unbearable sin to bear for him.

What past act are they most proud of? Any time he can save someone. Any time he can help the suffering of someone by giving a little coin. Every time he has made someone smile. It is all the most cherishable, wonderful memories to him. None better than the others.

Has anyone ever saved their life? His twin brother Arc probably on at least a weekly basis. I think saving eachothers’ lives is a regular thing on a battlefield, even if your ally is basically a stranger.

Strongest childhood memory? Just sitting underneath the stars, curled up under a blanket with his brother while they rest their head on their father’s lap as he reads them bedtime stories.

Love

Do they believe in love at first sight? Absolutely. Guy will trust anyone at the drop of a hat, why not fall in love, too?

Are they in a relationship? Not officially, no. I think he casually flirts a lot and has gone out on sporadic dates with many people, but he hasn’t become anyone’s “steady”.

How do they behave in a relationship? Alus is extremely inexperienced. I think he’ll end up trying so hard to show off to whoever he’s dating that he’ll become exhausted. He wants to treat his future spouse like royalty.

When did you character last have sex? [SPOILER]Never![/SPOILER]

What sort of sex do they have? Nothing kinky or out there, he’s a shy confused mess to begin with when it comes to sex - he’s probably very reserved and traditional about it. I should note that Alus is canonically asexual, even if he doesn’t fully realize it yet. He doesn’t really understand the appeal of sex but he’d want his significant other to be happy. [NSFW/18+] He’d definitely insist on being a top, though. [/SAFE!]

Has your character ever been in love? As an greyromantic writer, I have no fucking solid idea what romantic love is supposed to be defined as. If you define it as ‘fantasizing about having a certain person in mind as a future spouse’ then, yes, Alus has been in love loads of times.

Have they ever had their heart broken? Many times, but it rarely gets him down for too long - he’ll fall in love with the next person he sees, then the cycle restarts.

Conflict

How do they respond to a threat? A fake, forced smile. Explaining calmly to the enemy that what they’re doing is wrong. Explaining calmly to the enemy to drop it and go drink tea with him instead. If being calm doesn’t work, yelling at them about their hypocritical morality like some sort of shounen superhero making a speech.

Are they most likely to fight with their fists or their tongue? Tongue, for sure. Alus will be so painfully reasonable with his enemies that the only way he’s drawing his sword to fight is someone else draws first.

What is your character’s kryptonite? Like any hero, he’s a sucker for hostages. Also, math completely turns him fucking stupid. [SPOILER]Also... having his morality questioned, especially being accused of being a hypocrite.[/SPOILER]

If your character could only save one thing from their burning house, what would it be? A faerie tale storybook from his childhood his father read to him often when he was alive.

How do they perceive strangers? “A friend he doesn’t know yet.”

What do they love to hate? I don’t really imagine Alus truly ‘hates’ anything or anyone, just greatly dislikes or disapproves of them. And even then I think he doesn’t particularly enjoy disliking them. I don’t think he views negative feelings as something to be prideful over.

What are their phobias? Slugs and other slimy creatures, as well as mild situational claustrophobia.

What is their choice of weapon? His fists, for sure; there’s some sort of philosophy inside his mind that fighting with his bare hands or body without tools or weapons to aid him is the ultimate form of respect towards other human beings’ pain and livelihood - he wants them to know he shall feel pain right back if he strikes someone else, and he’s allowing himself the possibility to be hurt in return.

What living person do they most despise? I think anyone who justifies war or pain as a glorious and wonderful thing instead of a tragedy is someone he dislikes. Especially if said person has no respect for human life or the bodies of the fallen.

Have they ever been bullied or teased? Plenty. Unfortunately mostly his given name is particularly targetted. He’s also been called too soft plenty of times.

Where do they go when they’re angry? Home - his house is well soundproofed and cozy. He may go on an off-trail walk alone in the middle of Thanalan or the like.

Who are their enemies and why? The Garlean army, the Ascians.. do you really need to ask why? They wish to create death and chaos, that’s plenty of a reason enough.

Work, Education and Hobbies

What is their current job? Maelstrom military field medic, café proprietor, free paladin

What do they think about their current job? The café is seemingly always empty, but he doesn’t mind continuing to pour money into it. It’s a safe haven to him and a symbol of his independence from the violent life of military duty. Being a field medic is endlessly horrifying, but he’s glad he can help people. His status of Free Paladin makes him obligated to carry out duties to help Eorzea, which is something he’s proud of - but he is always not all that great at drawing his sword at the sign of trouble.

What are some of their past jobs? The only other “jobs” Alus has had in the past were mostly just side jobs for a little extra pocket money, mostly dancing on the street.

What are their hobbies? Dancing, capoeira martial arts, piano, tea brewing, baking, reading, writing, sketching, watercolor art, goldsmithing, fashion, bird keeping.

Educational background? Went to a school for accounting for a few years. He retained absolutely no information about accounting.

Intelligence level? Literate; can read older more complex texts easily. Good with maps. More of a “physical education” kinda guy.

Do they have any specialist training? Paladin training. Nothing else formal.

Do they have a natural talent for something? Weirdly incredibly good at parkour - stuff like navigating tightropes and climbing up buildings without any hesitation or struggle.

What is their socioeconomic status? At the moment, Alus is pretty well-off. He and his brother own their own business in the Lavender Beds, and Alus can afford high class clothes, hobbies, furniture and the like. He’s also prone to donate to charity near constantly.

Favourites

What is their favourite animal? whatever birds are ROUND

Which animal to they dislike the most? S L U G S

What place would they most like to visit? His cafe, honestly. It’s a safe haven.

What is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen? People.

What is their favourite song? Simply Satie

Music, art, reading preferred? Alus loves playing piano, drawing sketches and reading storybooks. I don’t think he could trade one for the other! (He’s awful at singing though.)

What is their favourite colour? Pale blue, white, yellow-gold, and pastel pink.

What is their password? “Password”. Nobody will ever get it!

Favourite food: La Noscean toast! (AKA French toast!) with lots of berries and whipped cream!

Who is their favourite artist? ??? ((OOC: if Alphonse Mucha was in FFXIV it’d be him idk))

What is their favourite day of the week? E V E R Y D A Y (but probably mostly Sunday)

Possessions

What is in their fridge: Fresh salad, fruits, fresh berries, vegetables, tofu, jackfruit, orange juice, leftover strawberry shortcake, protein shakes, leftover rice, eggs, butter, yogurt, frozen berries... and even fresh flowers?

What is on their bedside table? A dozen lighthearted fairytale and academic books on aether he recycles through reading every night as he goes to bed, a pitcher & glass of water, a vase with a flower in it, reading glasses, 3 inch tall lil stuffed dodo.

What is in their bin? Compost bin for old fruits/vegetables/egg shells/bread and a recycling bin full of paper and packaging garbage.

What is in their bag? A lot of coin, a hairbrush, a box of ice chilled flowers, travel-size beauty products, lots of fireworks and other fun little spectacle toys, a pocket-sized book of poetry, a basic armor polishing set, a miniature sewing kit, bandages, healing potions.

What is their most treasured possession? A very old and damaged book of fairy tales from his childhood.

Spirituality

Who or what is your character’s guardian angel? His adoptive father - at least, that’s what he wants to believe.

Do they believe in the afterlife? Yes! Very much so.

What are their religious views? [SPOILER]Alus has a complicated relationship with religion. For the most part of his life, he’s believed in The Twelve like every other Eorzean, but as he’s grown older he’s found himself more and more impatient and even disgusted of the cruelties that the gods allow to happen, and the ways followers of Nald’thal and Halone use their religion as a means to prey on the weak for the sake of money, classism, and racial disparity. Hearing the words of Garlean soldiers point out that proof that The Twelve exist is seemingly nonexistent has further disrupted Alus’ belief in them. Alus does, however, firmly believe in Hydaelyn.[/SPOILER]

What do they think heaven is? Alus has no true confident belief in what exactly the seven heavens are, but he likes to think heaven is a place where flowers bloom all the time, the weather is always warm and sunny, bugs don’t bother you and war and violence never happen, and relaxing tea parties are hosted all day long, clothes are comfortable and pretty and never soiled by dirt and mud no matter how much you play in the grass.

What do they think hell is? Like many Eorzeans, Alus believes in the seven hells. The seven hells are a place that one must climb out of to eventually make it to heaven, and depending on how bad of a person you were in life, the deeper in hell you start out in after you die, and the more you have to climb before you get upward into heaven. Alus finds great comfort in this ideology because it means that no matter how bad a person was in life, they may still find forgiveness and redemption in death.

Are they superstitious? I think he’s open-minded. He seems to discover so many legends of being real every day that it’s difficult for him not to believe in anything and everything he hears. He tries to be respectful of the unknown and follow their rules, but when push comes to shove it’s all about the grandest happiness for everyone - he will challenge whatever fae or ghostly apparition that wants to mess with him if he thinks what they’re doing is immoral or unfair.

What would they like to be reincarnated as? A stream. A rosebush. A rainbow. Something that others can look at and feel at peace, something for others to enjoy. A way to give love without living a life that inevitably creates suffering through heroism. To just exist as part of the beauty in the world.

How would they like to die? He doesn’t know. Death scares him. He does not want to die in battle. He does not want to die sleeping in a bed. But he wishes he’ll be old. He wishes he’ll have lots of friends. And he wishes he did everything he could while he was alive to make the world a better place as much as he possibly could.

What animal is most like your character, spiritually speaking? .... A golden retriever. Eager to please, extremely loving and loyal, a strong body, picky about weird things, and incredibly goofy.

Values

What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person? Betrayal?? torture?? bullying?? rape?? what do you want from me. He hates all forms of toxic and violent behavior!!

What is their view of ‘freedom’? The ability to form your own path; the ability to be whatever you want, even if the dream seems impossible to everyone else. The ability to go anywhere you want, walk and run anywhere you want, travel anywhere you want. The ability to say no when you want. The ability to be respected as independent.

How often do they lie? NEVER!!!!!!! He might bend the truth a little bit or side-step an answer but even white lies he’s not into. He rarely needs to white lie about anything anyway; he tends to see the best in everything.

What’s their view of lying? BAD AND UNNESSESARY

How often do they make promises? Constantly.

How often do they keep or break their promises? He 100% keeps his promises unless he’s literally physically incapacitated and in which case he will apologize and try to make it up to you so much

Daily life

What are their eating habits? Vegetarian. He eats really healthy and he eats a lot. Big fan of asian food I think. Has no problems eating stuff that’s bland as hell; I feel like it’s part of his determination to better himself. Has a terrible weakness for sweets, though. Secretly hates stuff that’s slimy, like mushrooms, but he will never complain if it’s given to him.

Do they have any allergies? Nope, he’s lucky. If he does, he hasn’t discovered it yet.

Describe their home. Very white, tons of gold nouveau trim on everything, and tons of flowers everywhere. Looks like the home of royalty. [Here’s his housing aesthetic.]

Are they minimalist or a clutter hoarder? Neither, I think. Maybe leaning closer to minimalist over clutter-lover; he likes everything being clean and easy to access in his house. His design aesthetic of nouveau isn’t necessarily minimalist in inherent style though imo.

What do they do first thing on a weekday morning? Wakes up extra early, takes a quick cool shower to wake himself up, eats a quick and simple breakfast full of protein; most likely something with a lot of nuts and eggs as it’s ingredients + big salad. packs a simple lunchbox and starts his day: Every morning, he walks to the statues of Nald and Thal, viewing the warm pink sunrise in the process. he pays his respects to each; cleans and dusts with a simple cleaning kit he’s left there prior. Leaves some simple offerings. Finds somewhere nice and empty in Thanalan to do some excercises and martial arts training for the day. sits down and eats lunch afterwards. lazily walks home, takes another quick shower to get the sweat and dust off. while his hair is drying, he puts on makeup and decides a proper outfit to wear for the day. meets up with arc, goes on their obliged military-issued mission for the day.

What do they do on a Sunday afternoon? Makes an effort to drag Arc over to his place for a big fancy dinner. Tea and crumpets as an early evening appetizer. Alus cooks everything while Arc hangs out and talks, lending a bit of help when Alus demands asks for him. Arc sneaks in alcohol. Alus yells at him. repeat next week.

What do they do on a Friday night? this but like, outside, alone, in the middle of thanalan somewhere

What is the soft drink of choice? If soft drinks existed in Eorzea I can’t help but feel like Alus is one of those freaks who don’t like any of them.

What is their alcoholic drink of choice? NO

Miscellaneous

What is their character archetype? This question originally linked to some basic archetypes, but I already have TVtropes collected and they’re far more interesting as an answer imo SO: [All-Loving Hero], [Reluctant Warrior], [Cloudcuckoolander], [Warrior Poet], [Stepford Smiler], [Motor Mouth], [Large Ham], [Stupid Good], [In Touch With His Feminine Side], [The Fashionista], [Light Is Good], [Flower Motifs], [Declaration of Protection].

Who is their hero? I don’t think Alus has a specific person in mind that isn’t fictional - fact is, nobody is as perfect as the type of person he strives to be. I think he finds traits of admirable heroism everywhere in people, though. Everything from his friends who fight for the good of the world no matter what, from the villain who unexpectedly saves someone while nobody else is watching, to the single mother who works hard to raise her children, to the homeless people who just continue to fight on to live even when everything feels so hopeless around them. I think he sees traits in others he wishes he had all the time. He wants to embody all the good traits of everyone. And I should mention, if one is to have a ‘hero’, it is expected that person to be better than one, yes? I don’t think Alus believes he’s particularly better than anyone else, especially in their positive traits.

What or who would your character dress up as for Halloween? Alus goes HARD on All Saint’s Wake. He and Arc’s signature best costume always ends up being these hyper-realistic ghost costumes that they trick out with special glamours, magic, and tech to surprise the passerby. If it doesn’t genuinely scare someone, it isn’t enough!

Are they comfortable with technology? I think he’s absolutely got the boomer brain when it comes to allagan technology. He can get by fixing old mechanical clocks and the like but when it comes to allagan stuff, he’s just absolutely out of his element. He’ll certainly listen if someone wants to try explaining it to him, but it’ll take considerable time before he fully “gets it” and usually when he does, it’s more on blind faith and an ability to follow basic directions more than true understanding. I think in general it just doesn’t really interest him and if he’s going to spend the time and energy to learn about it, he’d rather use that energy on his other interests - books, physical training, baking and the like. (Modern AU: He’s absolutely the guy still using an ancient flip phone because “It still works!” Also, he capitalizes and uses perfect grammar in all his extremely-hard-to-type number code texts.)

If they could save one person, who would it be? It’s a difficult question, because of course - the first person to come to mind is Arc. But the thing is, Arc can take care of himself. And Alus knows this. Alus trusts this. So when it comes down to choosing between Arc and someone less capable.. Alus will most likely help the less capable person. If Arc is hurt, Alus knows he’ll forgive him. But if Arc were to die? And it be Alus’ fault? It would utterly crush him.

If they could call one person for help, who would it be? Arc, of course. There’s nobody Alus would rather have by his side while dealing with problems.

What is their favourite proverb? “Since it is likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and courage.” – C.S. Lewis (Personally my fav proverb in thinkin about Alus is “Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.” – Hermann Hesse)

What is their greatest extravagance? This is kind of a depressing and even controversial answer, but it’s honestly any time he has ducked out from military duty with or without permission when all of it has just gotten to him too much. He knows that him not being there will be more of a problem than a solution - he knows that - but any moment he can just pretend, for a moment, that he’s just a normal man running a normal little girlish cafe during a time without war.. That’s his greatest extravagance.

What is their greatest regret? The amount of enemies he has been forced to down when talk wasn’t enough is piling higher and higher every moon cycle. It’s an absolute horror. He tries so hard to be nonlethal as possible. He’s studied so much how to avoid vital organs, how to down someone without hurting them badly, but no matter what there is always the chance of there being a prior injury he didn’t know about, or a undiagnosed medical problem that was just activated by the smallest knock.. That isn’t even to mention the people who have been hurt because the people he talked down didn’t keep their word or stood back up when he thought they’d stay asleep. No matter what, he just isn’t enough to save everyone. Why is it that no matter how hard he works to have this ideal of pacifism, it never works completely? Why is it never enough?

What is their perception of redemption? That the unwavering truth of this world is that people are fundamentally capable of change. He refuses to believe otherwise, no matter what. Perhaps it is an active choice instead of an instinctual one, nobody is certain for Alus’ mindful case. He believes the expectation for lifelong punishment for a past crime is petty and cruel, and in itself deters people from switching sides for the better. He believes anyone and everyone deserves the right to have the choice to right their wrongs at any time. Don’t misunderstand though - He understands sometimes people are far too gone for simply dropping everything they’ve done and that’s enough to erase their mistakes - he knows that some people can only find rightful redemption in the afterlife after execution, even if execution is not an ideal solution to stopping them in his eyes. But he prays for them. He’ll never give up on anyone.

What would they do if they won the lottery? Back into investments or savings to get an even bigger profit later. Alus knows how to play the smart long game. But uh... If the fates play a trick and he sees a beautiful fashion piece in a shop window, maybe that won’t last too long. He’s also notoriously overly generous with money to the needy, he spends money on service tips like pouring water out of a glass. Money is always moving, and if he starts to run low, he just works a little harder to get back to the comfort zone. He’s in a pretty good place in his life monetarily wise atm already.

What is their favourite fairytale? It’s difficult to answer this because I don’t know what sorts of stories exist in Eorzean canon! But I can say that the real-world 1986 manga “The Sword of Paros” is a huge inspiration to Alus’ character. It’s about a person born with the title of ‘Princess’ who believes to have been born the wrong gender, and does everything in their power to prove themselves worthy of the title of ‘Prince’ despite immeasurable odds against them from their family and their country. The hero also falls in love with a commoner woman who wishes nothing more to be loved by the idyllic image of a charming knight in shining armor that comes and rescues her, and their love is ultimately tragic as it’s also not recognized as valid.. but the prince never stops fighting for his title and the right of his love, and the ability for them both to be happy. Though the story ends without the ideal conclusion, the very concept of these characters fighting against all odds for something genuinely better for the whole world is something Alus is really all about. (Also, seriously, read this manga. It’s groundbreaking. It’s Utena done right.)

What fairytale do they hate? Any faerietales that have unhappy endings, or seem to focus strongly on tragedy or pessimistic ideas of realism in the world. That tends to fall into the category of ‘cautionary tales’ most the time. He’s also really not a fan of stories with body horror or gore.

Do they believe in happy endings? I think he believes that happy endings should always be the goal, but I don’t think he truly accepts that they actually exist. He understands that happiness and safety is always temporary, and this is why he should always strive to make the world a better place. If he helps someone get to a point that they’re happy, healthy, and safe - he’ll just move on to the next person who needs his help. A happy ending for himself though? I think he’s not confident in it, but he wants to live every day to the fullest as he can before he dies. He accepts this as part of his duty - he knows he’s living on ultimately borrowed time.

What is their idea of perfect happiness? Being in love, being surrounded by people you love, having the support of others you trust and having the ability to spoil the people you care about. Having a home you’ll never be kicked out of.. And no war that you have to leave to. No people you have to harm. Just the peace to drink tea with your former enemies as you gaze out onto flowers on a warm day... That’s all he ever wants.

What would they ask a fortune teller? I think he’s concerned if he’ll ever someone to truly share his life with besides his brother. He just really wants a good friend.. Ideally, someone attractive he can hold the hand of!

If your character could travel through time, where would they go? Before the Calamity. He’d just want to listen to his father tell him a few more stories again. He misses the peacefulness of his childhood, the certainty that someone out there stronger than him loved him and wanted to keep him safe, the ability to ignore his own call to war... He wouldn’t so selfish to want to try and bend fate enough to save his father, though he would if he had the chance.. But he knows it’s impossible.

What sport do they excel at? (Modern AU) He was definitely a cheerleader in highschool and/or college, I feel like. Probably into dancing! And ofc a dedicated martial artist. I feel like he’d be pretty good at football and wrestling too - games that require a bulky build to be great at - but he just doesn’t have a particular interest in either of those.

What sport do they suck at? (Modern AU) Probably stuff like archery and tennis - not only would he’d thrive better in big team sports, he’s just not much for long-range dexterity. He’d also be absolutely incompetent as an esports competitor lmfao.

If they could have a superpower, what would they choose? Anything that was especially effective at saving peoples’ lives. Time travel to stop mistakes before they happen or say the right thing before a war breaks out, super effective healing powers... anything. Just to stop suffering and death.

#meme #alus beauregard #ffxiv rp #this literally took me like 4 months to complete fuck

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mattyfm · 4 years

Text

new york’s very own matthew oliver was spotted on broadway street in converse . your resemblance to luke hemmings is unreal . according to tmz , you just had your twenty-fourth birthday bash . while living in nyc , you’ve been labeled as being temperamental , but also benevolent . i guess being a gemini explains that . 3 things that would paint a better picture of you would be bubbly laughter, the smell of fresh coffee, & long drives to watch the sunset . ( cis male & he/him ) + ( monique , 20 , she/her , pst . )

my name is monique i’m both the baddest and saddest bitch you’ll ever meet and i have NEVER written a concise intro in my life, so be prepared for a lot of jumping around, incomplete thoughts, and information you didn’t ask for. without further ado let me introduce you to my angel boy matthew oliver.

𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐬

full name. samuel matthew oliver.

nicknames. sam, sammy, matt, & matty (preferred name and most commonly refereed to as).

age. twenty-four.

date of birth. june 17th.

occupation. actor. (i might give him another job eventually but don’t hold me to that)

sexual / romantic orientation. bisexual & biromantic.

birthplace. asbury park, new jersey.

zodiac. gemini.

spoken languages. english.

𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐡𝐲

samuel mattew oliver was born to two extremely loving parents jeremy and elizabeth marie oliver, arguably one of the most influential celebrity couples known to man, at least that’s what it felt like growing up in the household, everyone was talking about the oliver’s and when they weren’t...well that never happened

as a middle child, preceded by his older brother mason, and succeeded by his younger sister cassandra, naturally he was born with a crave for validation, anything that separated him for his siblings

but naturally in his need to be different he found his closest allies, more so mason than cassie, but eventually she grew on him, and was most certainly not forced upon the dynamic duo of brother by their parents, but believe me he grew to adore her!

childhood was seemingly normal minus the bombarding questions from nosy students who wanted to know what it was like to have celebrity parents or be rich or live in a house with more bedrooms than necessary

unlike his siblings however matty reveled in the attention way more than he let on, it was nice to be noticed for something, even if it wasn’t quite what he’d been hoping to be noticed for

but by no means was he stupid! he wouldn’t allow anyone to take advantage of him and had an unusual talent for knowing when people only wanted to use his friendship as some sort of gain for himself, and extended this talent to his sister cass, because boy oh boy did she need it

their dad who i forgot to mention was a professor at juiliard, his alma matter, caused a constant bouncing back and forth between their coastal home in new jersey and their urban townhouse in new york

both places felt like home to the trio! they made so many good memories, however matty was extremely preferential to the coast, and to this day maintains a beach boy vibe, swears everything is just better by the beach

going back to his upbringing for a minute high school rolled around for him and mason and he just became even more extremely protective of cassie, he went through things extremely unknown to his family

on the outside he was the model person and student, honor roll, a long glowing list of extracurriculars including sports, even holding down a normal job like everyone else at his high school, and not a single blemish in his criminal record, the squeaky clean olivers remained squeaky cleans

HOWEVER there was some shady stuff going on behind the scenes my guy, nothing too terrible, just the usual teenager with loving parents who raise a troubled teen, not because of any past trauma but a need to feel seen

DRUGS & ALCOHOL TW got into a lot of fight but always told them they had to fight after school, he got into drugs, nothing too hardcore, just weed (is that a weed i’m calling the police vibes).....at first.....but that’s a different story so moving on! he of course drank with his buddies at high school parties, honestly just vibing my guys, just straight vibes always

secret!!!!

CAR ACCIDENT TW & ALCOHOL TW & DEATH TW one day he’s vibing, it’s the summer they’re celebrating another school year complete, and by the end of the night nearly black out drunk at this point, he knows he can’t go home so he decides to get a ride home with a buddy he worked with, tell his parents that said buddy took him home after work, they worked on homework and fell asleep. and honestly had he had a little less to drink, he would’ve realized that his friend was just as drunk as he was, but they drove anyways. this lead to a drunken car accident, that ended in the death of a pedestrian. thankfully his friend’s dad was a lawyer, and they covered that shit up immediately.

after this whole ordeal choose an accelerated course of study to pursue his acting career, finally something people would talk about that would be solely his, like not really, but let him have his moment alright, he was desperate

lowkey feels guilty about being a hypocrite towards cassie because he’s telling her not to do any of the thing

ADDICTION TW he almost kicked his habit but getting back into acting and the guilt of having blood on his hands, was too much for matty, and he developed a drug / alcohol dependency, which he recognized was extremely harmful! he went to rehab! and has been very vocal about his struggle with addiction ever since

had an on set romance with a costar that crashed and burned, quite publicly, and was just not good for his mental health one bit! def didn’t help with his constantly teetering sobriety but he managed to get through it with the help of his family and his friends

acting wise he’s starred in a bunch of movies but his baby is the netflix show that he’s been working on, i would like to think it’s kind of a sitcom esque show mixed with the same comedic timing of the office, parks n rec, those kinda self-aware humor vibes

ADDICTION TW he plays one of the main character, and his dipped his toes into directing and writing a couple of episodes, the show truly gives me one day at a time vibes, just brings light to mental health, addiction, important issues you don’t normally see portrayed on tv, and he def plays schneider, the bumbling rich boy who does and says what he’s told, struggles with addiction, has a super childish nature, and just a hint of self-awareness but just a hint as a little treat

this is so ooc but i’m realizing he’s quite literally schneider from one day at a time

MENTAL HEALTH TW & ANXIETY TW has receded from that cool kid persona he once held back in what i refer to as his ‘glory days’ and is now extremely vulnerable to everything and everyone, will literally cry if you even look at him the wrong way. struggles with really bad anxiety, among other mental health issues (which is why his netflix show and he advocate so heavily for mental health!) but is quite literally one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, softness runs in the oliver family ig.

IS LITERALLY SO CHILDISH....where was once extremely mature for his age....he now copes with his trauma by just acting like a toddler, literally mixes chocolate milk IN HIS MOUTH like a heathen, but that still doesn’t stop him from being fiercely protective of cassie, and will fight anyone for her

currently vibing! filming, being his best(?) self, and making trips to the nj coast

𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲

positive traits. accommodating, adaptable, affable, affectionate, agreeable, altruistic, amiable, attentive, caring, cheerful, communicative, compassionate, considerate, courteous, creative, dependable, easy-going, empathetic, exuberant, friendly, fun-loving, generous, gentle, genuine, gregarious, helpful, honest, humane, humble, joyful, kind, lively, loyal, loving, optimistic, outgoing, passionate, playful, reliable, resilient, romantic, sincere, sociable, tender, trustworthy, thoughtful, understanding, and warm-hearted.

negative traits. anxious, amenable, avoidant, awkward, critical, defensive, disorganized, dogmatic, (over)emotional, evasive, foolish, forgetful, forgiving, gullible, headstrong, hopeless, idealistic, impatient, impulsive, irrational, messy, moody, oblivious, (over)protective, sensitive, shy, thoughtless, and weak-willed.

𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

here’s some basic plot ideas but we can always brainstorm smth! friends, frenemies, enemies, friends to lovers, childhood friends, ex best friend, costars, unrequited crush, bad influence, exes, one night stand, roommates! i have

#wealthyhq:intro #alcohol tw #drugs tw #mental health tw #anxiety tw #car accident tw #death tw #addiction tw #i hope lia still loves me after this #i might cry a little bit #please love me <3 #I AM NEEDY AND SO IS HE

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heeres-suffering · 4 years

Text

Be More Alluring: a Personality Swap AU

[pic description and source will be at the bottom of this post, under the read more]

Start of summary:

“You need to be more alluring.”

"... don’t you mean attractive?”

“I do not. Your attractiveness is adequate, Brooke; if you want to mask your apparently latent queerness, you have to make them want you straight. Isn’t that why your step-father defended you?”

Brooke Lohst is a loser.

But you know what? That was okay.

She always knew she was a weird one. The intensity of her affection for puppies, picture books, and near-constant daydreaming has lasted well-past a normalcy she can’t seem to grasp; when coupled with her inability to befriend anyone (besides the similarly self-identified loser Michael Mell), it’s not a surprise the rest of her peers have left her behind.

However, there were... ah, worse things in her life to worry about then some mild bullying. She liked her passion well enough, and all of her true insecurities went largely unnoticed, so any insults or weird looks rarely lingered in her mind. It’s not like she was a constant target either, which helped a lot. All in all, she just planned to hunker down, wait out the awkwardness of High School like everyone else, and move on to the rest of her life...

Except.

When Brooke develops a crush on a girl she’s never talked to, after years of avoiding fairy tale romance and trying not to think about the inevitability of marriage (or how finicky her attraction to boys is in the first place), it feels like her whole world is about to cave in. She’d do anything to make sure her parents, especially daddy, never find out... including buying an edible super computer from the loudest, tiniest guy in school.

End of summary.

Alright!

Hi, hello, it’s Mod Seb, and here’s an AU I’ve been rolling around for a few days! You are free to do with this concept whatever you want, but I wanted to introduce it with a good chunk of the info I’ve already worked out in my head.

So. As the CWs are... too numerous, I’m going to go with a blanket “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” label and encourage you not to read the rest of this if you have any big darkfic triggers that could be upset by mere mention; this isn’t a fic tho, so descriptions of anything awful won’t last long.

Although, I will mention upfront that Brooke isn’t a binary lesbian. I know the description might read like I’m setting her up to be 100% homosexual; she’s bi with a strong preference for girls, and anyone who presents soft enough in gender or appearance. If it wasn’t for the end-game pairings, her unfamiliarity with smaller details/history of the LGBTQ+ community, and general “gay newb” status, she’d likely ID as a bi lesbian!

(ships and everything else under the Read More)

Okay. That out of the way, there’s quite a number of pairings; I’m pretty sure it’s a super polyamorous and sexual AU, though you’re free to change this list as much as you’d like:

[bolded are end-game ships. italics physically hook up at least once. strike-through means they were in a relationship but break-up in some way before the ending. (H) stands for healthy, while (T) is toxic and/or noncon. underlined characters are pining for the other and may never confess their true feelings]

Brooke/Christine (H), Brooke/Rich (H), Brooke/Jenna (H), Brooke/Michael (H), Brooke/Chloe (T), Brooke/her Daddy (T), Brooke/Squip (H), Brooke/Jeremy (soft T at first bc of mirrored canon-compliant manipulation, H later on), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy (H), Brooke/Squip/Jeremy/Rich (H), Rich/Moses (H), [insert every form of Rich/Mo/Squip/Jeremy here] (H), Jeremy/Chloe (T), Jeremy/Michael (H), Michael/Christine (H), Michael/Christine/Mr. Heere (H; no, seriously), Madeline/Brooke (H)

This is, of course, a role swap AU where Brooke and Jeremy trade places based on my personal lore for their home lives. I always have some pretty fucked ideas as I don’t imagine MB is a great place with great adults, and I pick and choose which parts of canons I use and which I don’t.

There is no definite ending planned in mind as this isn’t an outline; it’s meta (or an imagine or w/e) for an AU that you’re free to do whatever with.

So,

The big difference is that Brooke was picked by Michael, while Jeremy was picked by Chloe. Jeremy is trans and hadn’t come out yet; if Chloe had known he was a boy, she wouldn’t have grabbed him. In contrast, Michael’s never gave a shit about potential friends genders.

Jer and B’s personalities... are altered some. Not ALL the way, but kiiinda fusing into their roles, kinda tweaked (I'll get back to that).

The main point of this for me was Brooke/Squip/Jeremy, with B/Jer having a MUCH stronger focus than in canon, and a really bad Chloe acting as one of the major villains.

Michael gets roped into Chloe’s shit, even tho he's still generally a good guy here, bc he's worried about B and thinks she can't properly take care of herself.

While B DOES have a strong crush on Christine, she’s the opposite of the Squip’s “goal”; that’s (obvs) masking, or making passably digestible, her queerness.

Her Mom and step-’Daddy’ have reacted to her friendship w/ ‘openly gay moms, also very flamboyant and GNC’ Michael... poorly.

Michael thinks the solution has to be “act as aggressively yourself as you can, and if they reject you, you know me and the mom’s have a space for you”. This works for him bc he’s permanently hyper-visible, what with all of his own marginalized identities. But, not only has she flied under the radar in comparison to him for years, he doesn’t know everything about her life.

In fact, he doesn’t know most of it. She’s very good at hiding things.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, one of the more popular ‘boy... ish’ (we’ll get to this, too) people in school, is mid-psychosis and self-destruction. He actually has schizo-affective disorder--as is the case with all of my versions of Jeremy--which he needs medication for. Combined that with so many bad influences and trauma, he can no longer fully control himself or his life.

The way he handles this (badly) is to ‘whore around’--which, besides being Chloe’s pet, is kinda why he’s so popular. Nobody respects him, but he’s viewed some form of favorably.

Jeremy is in a relationship with Rich, but he won't let him get as close/protective as Rich wants; Mo and Rich were doing their own man-whoring (but healthy, just droppin’ panties and making dudes and chicks swoon--yeah, Rich is out as bisexual, this is a very ‘the Squips are a good thing’ AU) to gain their standard reputation, but in the course of that, they got together with Jeremy and it became... complicated. Both of them are very "nnn" about how bad his life is for Jer.

The way that their personalities are altered is... okay. To explain this, I have to talk about my characterization of canon-Brooke and Jeremy in relation to this, starting with Brooke:

I imagine B as just a liiittle below the line of "all the way there" for sorta-similar reasons to Jeremy here: trauma, and Chloe (which is why that’s what Jeremy gets in this, it’s just WAY worse when compounded by everything else). She’s also--like me, and like almost every character I write as a result--autistic, in a near-permanent state of “not enough accommodations” and over-stimulation. This leads to a lot of dissociation and a very wandering mind, as well as being perceived as a bimbo or dumb blonde or w/e misogynistic bullshit is projected onto her by the boys she dates (she’s also much more down the middle bi outside this AU).

So, going back to how she is for this AU: she's actually not super nerdy, despite the close connection she and Michael have. Honestly, it’s their general neurodivergent weirdness that bring them together, and so she’s mostly adopted her nerdy interests through him, whether directly a thing he likes, or finding a whimsical variant that fits her tastes.

Obviously, unlike Jeremy, she doesn’t mind being called a loser. She does any insinuation she might be queer. This including anyone who calls her gay or a dyke.

She has too much Cis Male Trauma (unlike canon, where it comes from both cis angles) to really entertain the idea of a Traditionally Male Partner. This means she skews HEAVILY towards hard GNC guys at the very least, and generally finds herself most interested in the idea of enbies and women. she's also not super into butches tho, bc her trauma mixing with her sexuality has latched on to Strong Masc People Are A Threat.

An expansion on her interests, in canon and otherwise: animals, ASMR/sensual service work (including massages and stuff), spending hours just sorta sitting by herself and letting her imagination wander, fairy tales, and YA-and-under fantasy books.

(Here, she tries to avoid het or f/f romance... except that, this past year or two, she’s started really like m/m stuff--esp after getting REALLY into drag shows, which she could enjoy safely since girls like Chloe have gotten into them too; in canon, she’s a romance fanatic)

Now... this is one of the really darkfic element; she's fucking her step-dad.

She does this so that he doesn't walk out on her, her mom, and her little sister*. Her mom has a good-enough job as a standard office woman, but he makes enough to pay the rent on their nice townhouse and all the bills she can’t. So, after he expressed interest in Brooke and then casually mentioned he could always just leave if she wasn’t comfortable, she reluctantly entered a relationship with him

(* = her sister is currently know as her brother; he’s like 12 or 13, and started showing signs of trans/queerness which have been Heavily Discouraged. Brooke worries about him a lot)

((I didn’t use she/her pronouns bc I’m not entirely sure he would change them? This is an OC Oli created at the beginning of our interest in BMC, and we haven’t worked on him at all since, so how his characterization will be is up in the air))

Canonically, Brooke's "in love" with her daddy, which is a self-imposed delusion; if she actually addressed it, she’d says she’s well aware that’s not true, but it's so much easier to pretend when you’re cornered like that. Brooke’s life blows.

She’s a lot more honest to herself about hating him here; still, she tries to be as polite and generally-friendly as she can, doing what he says whenever he wants.

OKAY, THAT’S BROOKE. If any of that is badly described or potentially-offensive, it’s just bc I glossed over SO MUCH DETAIL, even in that amount of it!

So. Jeremy.

I don’t have to go over him much and we’re all mostly aware of how I feel about him and also I don’t have the energy to do this again--

(just... read my fics The Devil at your Door or hello yesterday or something... eyyy actually do that, my ao3 username is Sedusa, blah blah blah ANYWAY)

--but basically: He's still very nerdy, like, he’s super into film as well as video games (which is another constant for me), but after being largely ignored in elementary, he's been trailing behind Chloe at her orders since they were in 6th grade. As a result he isn't very open about... any of his interests.

In 7th grade, he came out as trans to everyone. Chloe was furious, but at the same time, intrigued; this was around the time Chloe gets her own... ah shit I gotta go into that too--

--yet another hc of mine is that Chloe gets a Squip on accident around this time at a party (there was one in a “”candy bowl””), and from there, she claws her way up the ladder. I... will not go into that much, but her Squip was crippled by the drugs and alcohol in her system, and therefore largely at her mercy. She’s used his power to manipulate certain things about herself and to sharpen her focus on popularity to the point she’s full-blown Alpha Bitch.

Man, I’ve had to go on so many tangents, I apologize.

Anyway, she drags Jeremy around as a punching bag. She constantly mocks Jeremy's transness, even though she usually calls him by his correct name and pronouns.

This has made the rest of the school follow her lead, hence why I said “boy-ish”; he’s popular, he’s technically ‘well liked’, but nobody really takes him seriously. This is compounded by Chloe’s refusal to let him dress in 'dorky' casual clothes, and, as he’s both too poor to afford designer clothes and also generally hates popular guy fashion, he has to wear the hyper femme clothing Chloe specifically tells him too/

As such, people call him a boy but largely see him as either an idiot, a slut, an attention seeker, or all of the above.

So of course, in Brooke's place, his neurodivergence is more prominent than ever; every day he slips further into this psychosis and self-infantilization haze, as his his mom leaving, his dad severely depressed, Chloe's sexual violence, and other repressed trauma (see: my fic hello yesterday on ao3) all weighing on him. This makes him INCREDIBLY regressed, like, all the time by Junior year.

And then Brooke's Squip (IE: canon Squip) falls in love with Jeremy extremely fucking hard. He pushes her to date him as a way to compromise on her queer desires, since Jeremy is technically a boy, and certainly a few other straight-ish girls have hooked up with him in the past.

WHEW. That is a fucking lot. To wrap this up, lemme go over the interpersonal relationships not already mentioned, and what directions I think it takes.

First off, Madeline has a more prominent role, as I quite like her tbh; she’s a sex worker, she has her own Squip, she’s one of Chloe’s most hated enemies, and she gravitates towards both Brooke and Jeremy. She’s also Actually French, Chloe’s just weird.

(Anyway she prolly sees through Brooke’s straight act and asks her why she’s pretending to be a good little cishet. It rattles Brooke.)

Chloe is scum. This bears repeating. She DEFINITELY rapes Brooke at the Halloween party, and becomes obsessed with her, along with already being obsessed with Jeremy and Jake.

Jake, by the way, has a lot of regressive behavior and impulsiveness bc he’s been in an abusive relationship off and on with Chloe for years now.

Speaking of Jake, moving on to his best bro: Rich doesn’t set himself on fire. He’s having a good time with his Squip.

But.

He IS set on fire at the Halloween party.

Instead of the Smartphone Hour being about Rich's instability, it's actually about the mystery of Someone Did It To Him But No One Saw Who It Was, They Were Disguised.

The answer relates to the fact that Rich and Brooke are ALSO hooking up, after she’s already with Jeremy, bc he Properly introduces her to him and the three of them hit it off really well.

(She initially wasn’t interested, but while Rich is loud and still kinda abrasive, his Squip doesn’t drive him to act like a bully--and in private, his nerdiness is really obvious and he’s extremely gentle with her and Jeremy. Add to that that he’s bi and trans*, when Brooke connects best w/ queer men over cishet one, and it off-sets his masc-ness enough to make him an Exception.

* = I always imagine him as trans. See: all of Vanceypants fics.)

Sooo... the culprit is actually Brooke's daddy, who sees her with this obvious heartthrob and Cannot let that be.

Chloe convinces Michael that the Squips are Very Very Bad and has him team up with her to force Brooke into drinking Red, with the intention to convince him to kill himself after to get him out of the way, bc she’s really going nuts at this point.

Eventually, he snaps out of it when he and Christine get together (he’s thought he was Full Homo all of his life, but Christine’s prolly genderqueer-ness makes him realize “oh shit, I’m bisexual”) and she starts to question why he’s acting the way he is towards Christine.

He also definitely has a crush on Jeremy and during his time with Chloe he kinda tried to flirt a little but couldn’t really... he’s not up for dating someone as sexually active and a push-over as Jeremy is in this.

However, when he snaps out of Chloe’s manipulation, he and Christine approach Mr. Heere to convince him to straighten up and help Jeremy and also bc they really need an adult to successfully fight Chloe.

This requires a month+ of Christine getting him to see her psychiatrist (the one who prescribes her ADHD meds). Jeremy spends the majority of his time staying with Chloe, and very rarely comes home to gather things or to make sure his dad is eating/still alive, as much as he can remember to in his own haze of mental illness. Anyway, point is, he doesn’t know Christine and Michael are there often... not that, in the course of growing close to Mr. H, they both fall for him hard and it becomes one of my stranger OT3s.

(God, Jeremy goes through a lot of shit in this, tho.)

Pre-Squip, Jenna was kinda-sorta Brooke’s friend--or, well, friendly. However, she’s actually full blown “oh my God she’s wonderful” in love with Brooke.

Brooke isn't aware of that, esp since Jenna tries her not to be around her a lot. She's also trying to hide her own queerness, bc she’s a trans woman and she knows Chloe finding that out would be extremely dangerous.

Eventually, Chloe succeeds in making Brooke take the Red months after canon usually ends, w/o Michael’s help. If you’re curious, Red doesn’t affect her normal Squip bc she’s had him too long and a lot of his receptors and stuff are damaged, so it’s the second one she gets in canon that turns off.

This plan backfires, however, as Brooke’s Squip comes back with a physical body w/ help from Rich and also-bodied-now Moses.

With a body, and shenanigans, Mo and Squip take out Brooke’s daddy too. His life insurance more than makes up for the loss of his income, as it’s a sizable amount. Now that Brooke feels more empowered and strong, she overrides her mother’s neglectfulness and takes control of the household w/ her boyfriends*, comes out as queer, helps her sister transition, and begin to heal from all of this trauma.

(* = Rich and Mo move in, as does Jeremy eventually, after graduation; Jeremy gets a psychiatrist and a therapist and prolly has to go through some intense outpatient care and possibly a stay in the hospital, before finally making major breakthroughs and looking like himself again. The five of them are now happy and in love.)

Chloe, after her arm gets twisted by the Squip’s protective presence so thoroughly, gives up on Jeremy and Brooke to focus on Jake. This too gets abandoned when Rich and Mo help him cut her off, and so she stays in her own popularity bubble, bitter, until graduating and going to a community college in a different state.

All in all, things work out well in the end, but getting there is a long, difficult process. This AU fascinates me immensely and feels like a great way to examine some of my really dark headcanons about MB, as I think it’s a town similar to Derry in Stephen King’s IT--as in, just chronically The Worst Place Ever, with this, like, miasma of low-key despair around it. People adjust and don’t question it, which is why so much of BMC is this flippant dark humor in the face of some highly questionable shit.

I’m so sorry this post is so long (I’ll be uploading it to AU under my usual Sedusa account, as metas like this are more than allowed), but I really adore these characters and the way they can be twisted around, so I had a lot to say!

Thank you for reading <3

-mod Seb

image description: virtual-like stairs pointed forward and bathed in neon yellow and blue to represent Brook and Jeremy, which I’ve modified from the original blue-only design.

source: x (link description: a free Wallpaper Flare image that I found off Google Image’s “filtered by ‘labeled and reuse with modification” feature)

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ericleo108 · 5 years

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🎩 My Political Philosophy 2019: Oligarchy, Meritocracy, and Matriarchy

This essay is an exploration of my political philosophy or how I think society should run. I have a degree in sociology which only emphasizes the ignorance I have on the subject. As a philosopher, I can only aspire to create the next great political and economic system. My attempt here is to give an outline of what I think humanity should be striving toward while maintaining a fair, prosperous, and efficient future. Much further study is needed.

My approach is both egalitarian and utilitarian meaning equal and the greatest good for the greatest number. First I will talk about how the political system is run now where the corporate rich rule. Then I will talk about where I think the political system should be going, which is into a meritocracy. In the end I talk about how there is patriarchy (where men rule) but a matriarchy (where women rule) is now better for society.

Oligarchy

I know America is technically a republic but much research has gone into how America functions and it is actually an oligarchy. A small number of corporations make laws and get them passed through politicians they heavily endorse. For an in-depth read William G. Domhoff’s book “Who Rules America?” If I remember correctly the story goes something like this. The people elect their representatives which are basically picked by those who find funding from corporations, the corporations write the laws, and the corporate representatives pass them. This doesn’t happen all the time but it is more the rule than the exception. The people who are really in control are the CEOs of the companies that make the policy that gets passed as law.

Now we can argue if corporate rule is bad or not, but that won’t be argued here. If you want to know the negative side, which is basically greed over human wellbeing, read my post “The Result of Corporate Rule in America.” However, here I am more focused on taking the good parts from the current system and putting them to work for my meritocracy. The bad part about corporate rule is that they are narrow in serving their interests, but the good part is the country has a lot of wealth and is run by the most able.

Meritocracy

If we are to evolve our political philosophy into a better functioning system for all I suggest we keep capitalism and our republic and update our democracy and economy. Basically, I want to put in a point system for elections and safety nets into the economy. For a true meritocracy to function there has to be an equal playing field for everything. This includes political, educational, and economic opportunities.

Some things in the country we would need to employ would be a higher national minimum wage that has kept up with GDP and production, free health care, free college all the way till a doctorate, and a national holiday on election day. Each company has to reserve a certain percentage of ownership to its employees. There should be free financial services to the poor like an “advisor-teller” money manager but only designed to help the poor save and produce more capital.

In a world with as much wealth, efficiency, and technology as we have, not everyone has to work. Whether you want to work, or rather how you want to work should become an option you want to do and are passionate about. In a meritocracy, your job becomes your will and who you are. You are motivated to work because it fulfills you emotionally and spiritually rather than financially; it’s what makes you human. You’re also motivated to achieve to be represented better politically through the electorate point system.

I haven’t hashed out exact numbers but there would be an overall cap on wealth based on a percentage of the lowest producing income level. There would be universal basic income where everyone would receive, for example, $1000 a month, or $12000 a year. The wealthiest person in the country can only have 100 million times the lowest net worth. The richest person in the country can have more money but they would have to raise the minimum. This binds the fate of the richest and the poorest.

Those were corrections for the economy. To better the political process I suggest we put in a point system for voting. We do that by making your vote worth more if you have achieved a certain status in society. The following are examples.

You get one point for being alive and an adult. You get .2 points for an associate’s degree, .5 for a bachelors, and 1 if you're a ph.d. If you have a business that has been profitable for 5 years and you paid your taxes, it is worth .2 points. 12 years is worth .5. And that is where business owners are capped. If you can prove consistent monthly income for 7 years you get .2 points. 15 years .5 points. You can get there faster by working the same job for 5 and 12 years respectively. This makes employees and the employer equal. There are special circumstances where you can receive more points. For example, if you receive an olympian metal it’s worth .1 per Bronz, .2 per silver, .3 per gold. If your a tenured teacher is worth .8. You can add points over categories. So if your a successful 12-year business owner, with another successful 5-year business, won 2 gold Olympic medals, and have a Ph.D. you’ll have a total of 3.3 points.

Some of these are arbitrary numbers and a lot more research would be needed to see what points are appropriate at what stages. It’s not based on the Amount of money you make or have. In fact, the whole point is to give power to those who can perform, not simply those with just money. The merit is not only how much they contribute to society, but their ability to vote correctly for their interests and the interests of the country. We would obviously have to get rid of the electoral college and have a direct democracy. The point system would also prevent a tyranny of the majority.

The Patriarchy

I am interested in studying how a matriarchal society is different from patriarchy. I am interested in studying the political system of Finland and Iceland. It would be interesting to compare Finland with its new 34-year-old Finnish woman prime minister and the United States. Iceland held a women’s protest in 1975 and now their electorate is almost all women.

I think the approach of a male WAS an advantage when aggression and military might was needed for conquest and security. But in the age of giant militaries and nuclear weapons, a more amicable approach is needed. The same reason why women have traditionally abstained from the military or become caretakers at home is the same reason why they are superior to lead now that it’s the age of the Anthropocene.

Barack Obama has the inclination that women are better leaders but he gives no reason why. I think women are more fit for office because their temperament is more appropriate. It makes their approach and goals different. Women are just as smart as men but their thoughts are less testosterone and ego-driven and therefore better. Women are nurturers and naturally release more estrogen rather than testosterone which makes them less aggressive. This is important because thinking clearly, long-term, for the family has been an evolutionary attribute of women. Women are more evolved in dealing with a larger group and protecting not only her interests but the interests of the group.

I think it’s cultural why women don’t rule in America. Women don’t believe a woman is ready to be president. They're still too submissive to men. Native American societies were a matriarchy. I think women already rule, silently over men through interpersonal relationships. 85 percent of purchasing decisions are made in some way by women. I think America will eventually get to the point one day where women take the reigns of power and rule better than men through direct political power as the preferred candidate.

Reading List:

Who Rules America by G. William Domhoff

Oligarchy by Jeffry Winters

American Oligarchy by Ron Formisano

Plutocracy in America by Ronald P. Formisano

When Women Ruled The World by Kara Cooney

Societies of Peace: Matriarchies Past, Present, and Future

#Philosophy #politics #oligarchy #meritocracy #matriachy

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migleefulmoments · 5 years

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One of my fave Disney Princess stories is how she often implied that one of her 3 male LGBTQ+ actor ROOMMATES in LA is Oliver Stark. She said her roomie was a regular on 9-1-1 (dating back to s1) who was in every episode, was young (25-35), hot and unmarried. Oliver is the only guy that meets her stated criteria. Since she also said 2/3 of her LGBTQ+ roomies are closeted (and the 3rd is out), what's she implying about Oliver? Who outs close friends? It'd be horrifying, if it wasn't ALL LIES.

I’m just looking through some posts and found a bunch referring to her roommates as “L” and “A” -no mention of the 3rd one but I know she has claimed 3 in the past. I found this post about “L” calling her baby and clearly flirting so IDK what she is claiming with this.

She says she is staying in the mansion of the wealthy roommate so here we have mention of the hot gardener (as an aside, how many WalMart and Sam’s club stores are there in 90210-ok I looked the nearest Sam’s club is almost 40 actual miles which in LA is 3000 miles; WalMart is only 10 miles. I used “90210″ so super generic and I’m not sure that is where she claimed she lived- but the rich dude who owns the huge home and drives a BMW SUV he freely let’s random model/actor/influencers use isn’t driving 40 miles to Sam’s Club to save on chicken salad.)

La chronicles: I was tricked.

L: baby, I’m running to the store, wanna go?

Me: nope I’m staying here and salivate over this fan fiction and the gardener…. Whichever goes shirtless first.

A: *barks out a laugh* don’t molest the gardener.

Me: who me?

L: come on baby..

Me: noooooo. Sex and intrigue.

A: *Snorts*

L: I’m going to that little organic place you love…..

Me: chicken salad????? With the sprouts.?????

L: yep yep.

Me: okay!!.

A: have fun

Me: *running out the door shouts back* tell me if he gets nnnneeeeeekkkkkkkkkkkkiiiiidddddddddd

L: BABY!!!

Me: what? He knows he is hot….

………….……….……..

(Thirty minutes later.)

Me: the fuck is this?

L: I said I needed to go to the store….

Me: no oo you said organic grocery…

L: yeah and I’ll get your chicken salad after we stock up.

Me…………..

Me……….

Me: but that’s sams

L: pretty and brains

Me: but but ….. only place worse to be on Saturday is hell mart!!!! I don’t wanna go in there..its gonna take forever

L: suck it up buttercup

Me: I was fucking tricked.

L: lead by the tummy…….

More about “L” who is apparently famous enough to have fanfiction about himself which he can readily find. .

Watching Nomie

Youd be surprised who visits tumble land.

L loves reading fan fiction about himself (he says he gets more game online than he ever does in real life) and tumbler. 😂🤣🤣😂😂😂. He has a ridiculous fascination sharing gifs of himself. he’s a goober. They crack him up.

Below is her post about how she was bearding and had to hide “A” -is he her boyfriend of husband now she is hiding him along with her kids. Her kids were never living in CA that I ever read. They were in South Carolina she occasionally talked about being separated from her teenage kids but that it was her time now and her career was important. She would write about being in LA most of the time-cryptic parties and work posts- and going back and forth to SC though she rarely posted from SC- except during one of the hurricanes.

Anonymous asked:

Hmmm ok I'm slightly intrigued maybe u do get it But most probably you don't Have you ever given up and gave away something you shouldn't have because you thought it was for the best and that guilt just fucking eats away at you every day I have lied to everyone even my family to hide something I didn't even know about The work was more important and I would have sold my soul to get what I wanted I just don't know now if any of it was worth it and tbh I don't think the big guys even think it

answered: Yeah.

I had to hide my kids for two years when I first got back heavily into modeling and switching back to acting. Was also bearding. Because I look so much younger than I am, they were afraid it would show negatively work wise. Also they didnt want questions about A and the minis. (I’m still cast as characters ten years younger than the actress that usually plays my mother. Its the cheeks and the voice).

One day I fucked up and mentioned my kids and it got in print when they were talking about fashion week. A was cool about it. But it resulted in a huge move for the minis and the whole family had to adjust. Mine and his.

There are other times I purposely fuck up. Because you just get sick of juggling. Other times its an honest mistake and then you deal with the shit and move on.

So now she and “A” have minis (kids) and they had to move. I’m not sure what the hell she is trying to spin here but clearly he isn’t the platonic roommate hanging out in LA.

I found posts tonight where she claimed she has two friends in Hollywood who are gay and came out and one friend who slammed the closet door so hard it shook after he got an important role.

I had no idea about Oliver- good sleuthing.

She claims she’s pan and that gives her permission to say rude and misogynistic things

Anonymous asked:

Who is gonna tell Darr/en he looks like M/ia's "best gay" in most of the pictures of them together where they are supposed to look in love? Especially the ones from last night lol

Just ya typical queer (I’m pan so imma say that). With his beardy.

Or hag. Whatever term ya wanna use.(X)

She HATED MIa...called her Amelia and wrote incredibly offensive-downright hateful-posts about Mia under the pseudonym The Ghost- who just happened to call her Amelia. Anons would ask Disneyprincess question for The Ghost and Disney would either answer them on The Ghosts behalf or claim she would relay the message/ask The Ghost. Yeah right. She even wrote fanfiction under that pseudonym. It was super bad -sentence structure, plot development, and character development were all grossly missing. It was basically BWP (bullying without plot). The stories are gone now- I have scoured the web looking for them. I could kick myself for not saving some of them...if anyone has one, I'd love to see it. The plot line of one was Mia ordering Darren around her office telling him she had complete control over him while he coward in front of her. Darren meekly declared he would win in the end, but Mia just kept ordering him around.

These are kinds of posts who would make about Hollywood -keep in mind there was nothing before this post that make it understandable- I'm not exaggerating when I say this was typical:

Nomie party

You did????? When? Was I annoyingly perky or in professional mode??

That’s freaking awesome. We must have lunch.

Didn’t post the ask cause that was too many details on that party. 😂😂 already been in trouble thanks.

Glad I’m not the only one that thought he is an ass.

Anonymous asked: (X)

When did you see them out? Details

Can’t really say where I was as it included what I was doing and with whom. But it was here after the first of the year

I already posted this but it bears repeating- she, like Abby, won’t give away all their secrets aka they won’t give specifics (X)

Anonymous asked:

there is evidence of Wll and aash kissing in the clubbbb?!!!!!!!

That I can’t tell you. I know I’ve never taken a picture cause why would I? but I mean folks do snap pictures when folks are out and folks get things in background photos that people prefer not be seen publicly.

However I will say if you do some digging, there are a lot more cuddled up w/a pictures out there. One just needs to have the time and be invested enough to look.

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echodrops · 6 years

Text

Why Do Certain Ships Become So Popular? (And Why Should Writers Rethink When They Do?) - Part 3

<- Start at Part 1 for best understanding

<- And here’s Part 2 if you need it!

I’m going to end this discussion with a case-in-point comparing the mega-popularity of non-canon ships against semi-canon ships, and then discuss what this all means for writers, and how examining the popularity of ships in media can actually improve the way you write romance plot lines in your own works.

Pictures taken seconds before disaster

Although I’ve been reading My Hero Academia for a while, I haven’t been an active part of the fandom until recently and so there might be meta and other surrounding the series most popular ships that I’m not familiar with. But I want to talk about this series because it’s the absolute perfect model for the points I’ve been making in this whole discussion: shippers target pairs of characters with high emotional energy/tension, and the “canon” ship will always lag behind non-canon ships in popularity when the emotional energy between the romantic leads is not as strong as the tension between the male lead and another character.

My Hero Academia has the somewhat rare situation of having two almost equally popular non-canon ships for its main character: TodoDeku and BakuDeku. Technically, given what I can find using filters on AO3 and Google Trends, TodoDeku is the more popular of the two (at least in the U.S. except in Indiana; I have no idea what’s going on over there, but man they love BakuDeku) by a fair margin...

Which would actually make this a series that disproves the trend--because you can say what you want about Bakugou and his notorious assholeishness, but at the end of the day, I don’t think there are any readers who would really argue that the pair of students with the strongest emotional energy--the greatest degree of push and pull and the most effort, meaning, and time invested in their interactions--is Bakugou and Midoriya.

As I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t matter that much of the emotional energy/tension between these two characters is negative in nature (in fact, for a lot of fans that probably just sweetens the deal because it increases the potential for progress and growth so much)--rather, what matters is the depth and intensity of the emotional interactions between the two characters. There’s certainly no short supply of--at times--almost nonsensically powerful emotions between Bakugou and Midoriya. They’re Extra™ in every meaning of the word, and the manga drums that message in fairly consistently, especially in arcs in which heavily feature the class.

Get out of my school

Bakugou’s inferiority-superiority complex is fixated on Midoriya (whom, deep-down, he recognizes as a “better” hero than himself, despite the fact that everyone is constantly praising him and his powerful quirk), which means that even the most inadvertent of Midoriya’s actions triggers a reaction in Bakugou and Bakugou’s character.

Likewise, many of Midoriya’s significant plots and plot lines are driven by Bakugou--sometimes as a motivating factor (Deku is just as concerned about beating Bakugou as Bakugou is about beating him) and sometimes because the plot, rather hilariously, positions Bakugou in the role of Midoriya’s “damsel” in almost equal (actually it may even be more) proportion to the number of times Uraraka plays that role.

Bakugou and Midoriya’s combined progress is the emotional core of the student/class storyline, and they operate, in some ways, as joint protagonists whose play off each other drives the plot of the early sections of the manga, and whose rivalry fans can readily anticipate continuing to advance the main story in significant and meaningful ways. Bakugou, for example, still has plenty of growth to go through before he can really call himself a hero, and it’s only natural to assume that Midoriya, our premiere hero archetype, is going to be part of that growth--however grudgingly on Bakugou’s part.

Someone who actually ships this pairing (please don’t follow me for BakuDeku content, I got nothing guys!!) could probably go into much more detail on this and find much more support for it as a whole, but I brought it up to demonstrate that, once again, the pattern holds true: the greatest degree of emotional intensity, the core of these characters’ tensions and motivations, is another male character--and, equally on par with the pattern, they become an extremely popular ship.

But if Bakugou and Midoriya are the undisputed kings of emotional interaction energy among the students in My Hero Academia, why is TodoDeku the most popular Midoriya ship?

Well, besides the fact that Bakugou’s a grade-A asshole whose bullying crossed the lines for many fans, you can probably pretty safely blame Kirishima Eijirou.

My sunshine boy, where are the rest of your eyebrows???

In Kirishima’s emotional arc throughout the story, again, few people would argue that there’s any character more central than Bakugou.

This creates a viable ship that--importantly--plays well with others. Pairing Bakugou off with Kirishima leaves the series’ main hero free for shipping with anyone else, whether you prefer the semi-canon Deku/Uraraka or Deku/Literally-anyone-else-I’ve-even-seen-people-who-unironically-ship-him-with-Toga. In fact, this might be a little too much speculation on my part, but I almost feel like the degree of deliberate baiting this ship gets from actual staff (namely the anime and movie teams) is not only a ploy to appeal to female fans, but also an intentional way of deflecting some of the over-investment that’s gone into Bakugou and Midoriya’s storyline. Giving Bakugou someone else to focus on adds more variety to his scenes and provides Uraraka (or anyone else) a little more breathing room to interact with Midoriya.

The official media has to go this hard just so that Uraraka has any reasonable chance with Deku... Also god Bakugou, why are you so ugly in the anime...

Really, what I mean by all this is that part of TodoDeku’s popularity stems from it playing well with KiriBaku. Fans who want Midoriya with Todoroki are happy to ship KiriBaku on the side to get Bakugou out of the way, while even fans who don’t care much about Midoriya or Todoroki are happy to pair them together to free up Bakugou for their preferred Bakugou ship. It’s a symbiotic relationship, so to say, that helps elevate TodoDeku above BakuDeku in terms of popularity, even though without the presence of Kirishima, the stats would probably be skewed the other way.

That’s not to say that TodoDeku isn’t a perfectly valid ship or that it lacks the support or basis that BakuDeku has, because of course it doesn’t. It fits the pattern the same as all the other mega-popular ships do: if I were to ask “Who is the most important fellow student in Todoroki’s story?”, the answer would inevitably be Midoriya.

Todoroki is an ice prince prior to being beaten with the Friendship stick, and his choice to open up to Midoriya in a way that he hadn’t with any of his other classmates becomes the catalyst that allows him to--quite literally--thaw out and begin to have positive experiences with his fellow students.

His fight with Midoriya allows him to remember his resolve and his mother’s words that he has the power to be an individual separate from the looming shadow of his abusive father, which becomes a profound turning point in his character. In his clash with Midoriya, he opens up access to his fire side which he had previously repressed, a move which is tantamount to embracing who he is as a person, bolstering his sense of self-worth and autonomy and helping him to begin moving out from under his father’s thumb. His experience with Midoriya is, in short, utterly life-changing, and Todoroki’s character has never been the same since (for the better)--to the point that characters nowadays are teasing Todoroki about how uptight and icy he used to be.

There’s plenty of, to use the phrase again, emotional energy between Midoriya and Todoroki attracting fan attention and serving as the spark for the mega-popularity of the ship.

Bakugou is the most important fellow student in Midoriya’s storyline. Midoriya is the most important fellow student in Todoroki’s storyline. The interactions of these characters, however you choose to ship, is rich, meaningful, full of intense emotions (positive and negative), and--most importantly--strongly relevant to these characters’ individual arcs and even to the main plot overall.

But where does that leave Deku/Uraraka, the story’s semi-canon pairing and the (highly likely) endgame ship? Why is a pairing in which one of the characters has confirmed feelings for the other so far below non-canon ships in popularity?

Well, the premise holds true here--in reverse.

Say it with me, guys: the “real emotional energy” of Midoriya’s storyline has frustratingly little to do with Uraraka Ochako. She’s just not that important in his story.

The tension of Midoriya’s plot lines consistently has no personal connection to Uraraka, and all his most intense emotions and emotional scenes occur between him and other male characters. The problem I outlined in part two of this essay is in full effect here: female characters, especially in hero stories, are typically positioned in roles outside those which have major plot relevance. Uraraka might be “a hero,” but she’s not “The Hero.” She’s not the deuteragonist. She’s not the villain. She might qualify as a sidekick, except for the fact that the manga consistently prefers to pair Deku up with other male characters--such as Todoroki and Mirio--in the supporting roles. Uraraka, as a girl, simply wasn’t designed to serve in the same plot-mover-and-shaker capacity as the male characters. It’s the classic failure to write romantic female leads whose actions are central to the story, at it again.

I don’t mean that Uraraka has no impact on the plot--she did great against Kurogiri in the USJ arc, for example--nor to suggest that Uraraka isn’t a strong fighter (although of course, as a girl, she’ll never really measure up to the plot’s central males--sorry, can you feel my eyes rolling yet?). Her martial arts skills, clever use of her quirk, and, far more than that, her acumen for understanding people’s feelings mark her as a character with great potential... that’s just never really allowed to shine as much as it could be.

In her under-utilized position, Uraraka has less power and freedom to effect major changes to the main story compared to characters such as Bakugou. So far in the plot, she simply hasn’t occupied a position of importance or even enough individual screen time to put her personal arc in the spotlight heavily, at least in comparison to other characters like Todoroki, who, between himself and his family, now star in two whole arcs of their own. To quote Uraraka’s own bio, she has no “hidden side” or “ulterior motives”--two terms which might as well be synonymous with “fertile ground for creative fans to play with.” Being a simple and straightforward character is not the stuff of fan writer favorites, unfortunately.

More than that, Uraraka’s primary goal is no different than her classmates’--although she started with a somewhat interesting and unique reason for pursuing heroism (to help her parents financially), throughout the course of the series she evolves more into a character who embraces heroism for heroism’s sake. This is billed as progress, because the series comes down hard on those who seek to become heroes for their own gain. The only problem is... half the class at this point wants to become a hero because they believe in the merit of heroism itself. By growing into someone who wants to become a hero to genuinely help people and make a difference in the world, Uraraka actually becomes less unique and therefore more similar to just about everyone else in the class.

As time wears on, this problem of under-investment in Uraraka’s personal emotional journey becomes even more telling, as numerous battles for Uraraka devolve into little more than moments to reflect on her crush on Deku.

These are two separate occasions. Like are you kidding me--

If we were to remove Uraraka’s crush on Midoriya, she’d have absolutely zero tension between herself and other major characters. Literally no deeper emotional investment than “supporting friend.” It’s isn’t bad for a background character--but for what should be the main female character and romantic lead, it’s god awful. If we discount her newfound desire to punch herself in the face for jealous thoughts over Deku, Uraraka’s character hasn’t seen a lick of unique emotional growth since the Sports Festival. Worse, with her repeated entanglements with Toga, who also supposedly has a crush on Deku, I feel as if we’re almost inevitably going to get a chick fight scene in which they squabble over him. PLEASE MISS ME WITH THAT NONSENSE.

I like Uraraka. Or rather, I like what I think Uraraka could be. I want to root for her and I want to be impressed by her. But it’s hard when the writing of the story repeatedly tells me that she is less important than the male characters in her class, and that her own personal journey and motivations as a character could be reduced to “admiring the protagonist” and wanting to be like and be with him.

(“If I push down my feelings instead of accepting them, I can draw out our awkward romantic plotline for at least ten more volumes.”)

Who, at this point, isn’t motivated to greater heights of heroism by Midoriya? Even his role in her life isn’t unique to her... I almost feel bad for Horikoshi, in a way. Using other characters to inform the female lead of her romantic feelings for the hero is a classic trope that indicates a lack of experience writing and developing believable romantic plot lines. I guess when he said he wasn’t good at it, he really wasn’t lying.

The limited popularity of Deku/Uraraka plays word-for-word into the quote that sparked this entire discussion for me:

Many fans, particularly women, are disappointed by the contrived romantic story lines that are appended to ‘buddy’ series and movies in which the real emotional energy is between the heroic male leads (or between hero and villain) (McLelland 2006). [Source]

This is a classic scenario of a semi-canon het ship that, by virtue of its own under-developed female character, will never achieve the same level of support and interest among fanwork-producing members of the fandom as more emotionally invested and intense relationships such as those between the starring male characters. (Of note here: Kacchako’s number of vocal fans isn’t surprising, given that Bakugou’s refusal to treat Uraraka with kid gloves was the most respect the series itself has ever given her...)

All right, all right, I’ll stop. (By the way, if you’re a Deku/Uraraka shipper, more power to you, my friends. I really feel bad that your ship isn’t getting the meaningful development and depth it deserves. There’s nothing wrong with this ship in theory... just in practice. T_T)

SO! FINALLY! AT LAST! Speaking of practice!

What’s the lesson? What is the take-away?

I didn’t write this monster of a rant because I wanted to shit on canon ships, het ships, or (often male) writers failing to write believable women. I didn’t write it to justify my favorite slash ships.

I wrote because as I was mulling over my answers to recent conversations and after I stumbled on the quote I’ve shared repeatedly now, I had a bit of a heart attack.

I’m writer. Many of my friends are writers. I have a Masters degree in creative writing. I took seven years of creative writing in school. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words of both original work and fanfiction.

But never once have I sat down and consciously mapped out the “emotional energy” in my stories. Never once have I spent time actually examining the interactions of pairs of my characters and actively comparing them to really gauge where the core tensions and intensities in my stories really are.

I trusted in the notion that, as the author, I knew my own characters better than anyone else. If I wrote two characters in love, well then, surely it’s because they were meant to be in love.

In today’s discourse, the words “fan entitlement” are increasingly bandied around and often applied when fans get aggressive over their favorite ships not becoming canon. It’s easy to dismiss the frustrations of readers and viewers “as demanding something writers don’t owe them.” But this dismissal hinges on a central notion:

The original writer always knows best.

Whatever story the writers have written--whatever canon romances they have chosen--those are the “right ones,” and fans who piss and moan about that just “aren’t appreciating what they’ve been given.”

This is an easy mindset to understand in the face of fans who take their grievances to the extreme and harass creators. Harassment is obviously never acceptable.

But I don’t feel comfortable with the other side of the spectrum either. Blindly defending canon by completely ignoring cases where the fandom vastly prefers a non-canon ship to any canon alternatives... In the end, isn’t that the same as saying “It’s always the fans who are mistaken, never the authors”? Or, by extension: “As the author of this story, I can do no wrong.”

To me, authors who choose to simply dismiss their fans’ preferences--especially when the fans reject a canon relationship--are doing themselves a terrible disservice.

As a writer, I have never had nor wanted to have the thought that I’m perfect at what I’m doing. I am always keenly aware of the fact that my ability to write is limited. There are always things I felt I could have captured better. And more than that, I’m always trying to grow and improve my writing. I don’t want to be right all the time!

So why should I expect that my planned romances are always right?

Fans are not entitled to the ship they prefer. But if the fans prefer a ship you didn’t intend, that’s a good sign that something has gone wrong, and you might want to rethink the way you write romances, character interactions, character motivations, and potentially female characters in your next project.

A non-canon ship reaching mega-popularity in a fandom should provoke thought--not dismissal--from the series’ writers. And I don’t mean the kind of thought like “Would we have made more money if we’d caved to fan demands?” I mean things like “Where did I go wrong in writing my romance that led the fans to prefer something else? How can I fix that in the future?”

The take-away isn’t “I should give my fans what they want” but “How can I get my fans to want the same things I do?”

In order to align your fandom’s interest with the canon romance you’re writing, the canon main pair has to have meaningful, intense emotional interactions that are entwined with the central plot line or at least their own personal character development arcs--to greater or at least equal extent with any other potential pairing of characters in the story. Your romantic leads need to have interactions that are as compelling, as personal, as plot relevant as the hero and his (or her!) villain. As the hero and his or her sidekick/best friend/brother-or-sister-in-arms. It’s not enough for your main character’s romance to be “pretty interesting”--it’s got to be as interesting as his or her relationship with every other character in the story.

Now of course there are ways around this. A father-and-son story with a romance on the side doesn’t necessarily need to elevate the romance above the father-and-son dynamic. A hero and villain story where the villain is a complete monster that no one in their right mind would ship is probably safe, etc.

But I guess the basic baseline is this: If you’re bothering to write in a romance for your main character... don’t you--shouldn’t you--want it to be as compelling, intense, and believable as the relationships you write for any other characters?

If you want fans to love the love you’re written into your stories, you’ve got to give that love the same attention and effort as everything else in your plot.

How do you do this? What actual actions can you take in your writing to apply this idea? I don’t have a definitive answer that will magically make everyone’s romances perfect, and really, none of this is particularly revolutionary, but I think these are all good reminders that even when we’re writing our own original stories, there’s stuff we can do to check if we’re “doing it right”:

Make a single chart of all major character interactions in your story, especially those which provoke strong emotional responses in your characters and those which are relevant to the story’s main plot. You can mark positive emotional interactions in one color, negative emotional interactions in another. Do something to indicate the level of intensity for these interactions. Then, step back and look at the big picture. Which characters really have the most interactions? The most intense interactions? The most plot relevant interactions? If the canon romance you’re planning doesn’t have as many, as much intensity, or as much plot relevance as the relationship between your main lead and another character, think about how you can change that.

Ask yourself the important questions: Where is the real emotional energy in my story? Which characters have the most tension (positive or negative)? Which characters promote the most growth in each other through their interactions? Which characters are the real “movers and shakers” of the main plots? How do interactions with other characters help to advance Character B’s individual character growth? Spend time consciously thinking about the flow and cores of emotion in your story. Who really makes the biggest difference in your hero’s life?

Remove the romance and look at the story again. If romance is not the main point of your story, go back to your character interaction chart and remove all the romance and romantically-led plot points. What does the interaction chart look like now? Do your romantic leads still have compelling interactions even with the romance removed? Do they still motivate and help each other grow as characters even if they’re not romantic partners? Are their remaining actions relevant to the main plot? And, most importantly: with the romance removed, do they still have intensity? Are they still part of the story’s “emotional core”? Is there still as much or more energy between them than between the main character and others? If the answer is no, that’s a good sign that you can probably develop your romantic lead and his/her relationship to the hero more fully--or better integrate it into the main story and their personal stories--in order to improve the depth and quality of their relationship in the eyes of fans.

Take another look at your female characters. Even if you’re a female writer yourself, that doesn’t mean you automatically write great women. In fact, we’re often so conditioned to see males as the drivers of narratives that even series by female authors, with female protagonists sometimes fall into the trap of having a male character doing all the real heavy-lifting in the plot. Check your girls again. Do they have as much meaningful influence on the main plot as your male characters? Do they have as much meaningful influence on other characters’ personal arcs? If you remove all the romance, do they still have these influences? Are your female characters allowed to have as much diversity in their emotional interactions with others as your male characters are? Do the intensities of these women’s feelings match the intensities of the men’s feelings, even (especially) when romance is removed from the equation?

And I’m sure there are many more things you can try along the same lines.

Really, the idea I want other writers--professional, amateur original writers, or even just fan writers--to take away from this is the notion that we should never rest on our laurels and assume we know what’s what. We should never just expect our fans to agree with us as writers.

And, more than that, when the fans prefer something other than what we intended, we should always, always use that gap as motivation to rethink our writing, to discover where we might have fumbled in our plotting and character creation.

Fans don’t (usually) ship randomly. Most of the time, there’s a logic and pattern to this “madness.” If a non-canon ship becomes mega-popular, it’s usually because the fans saw something the creators missed.

And that is always--always--an opportunity to reflect and grow for future projects.

PHEW. I’M DONE! I did it! Man, this was such a labor of love... I hope some people actually read it...

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spellbounding-slytherin · 6 years

Text

So, talking about my Novels a bit more....

Hey there its Vira!

Thought I would talk about my novels a bit more, just so you guys know what you all would be getting into.

So, lets talk about Novel 1.

The Rings of Gallilea: Sworn to Rebirth

(Aka: TROG/ TROGSTR)

So here are the main plot points of the novel:

It is the sacred duty of the Celestial Trinity (the Sun, Moon and Earth) to protect the life in their solar system from outside alien threats

An imperial speciest race known as the Cantillians dub Humans inferior to them, thus sparking a war between them the Celestial Trinity.

The nine planets ally themselves with the Celestial Trinity to protect themselves from a God-destroying weapon created by the Cantillians known as the Catalyst.

The Rings of Gallilea are formed in an attempt to protect the solar system.

The goddess of the moon utilizes their influence on humanity to create a re-birthing curse. As long as humanity shares legends of the gods they will not die.

During a battle with the Cantillian emperor (known as the Serpent) Earth is hit by the Catalyst, destroying his physical form.

One-by one the Rings of Gallilea and the Celestial Trinity fall.

Eventually it is only Mercury The god of knowledge, Moon, the goddess of magic and Pluto rhw God of Alchemy left

In order to save humanity, Moon forces Mercury to give her an "unforgettable" curse so she will retain her memories as a goddess.

Moon uses what is left of her magical power to trap the Cantillian emperor in a diffrent dimension, before she is killed.

Moon falls to earth taking on the form of a human infant.

She is found by the son of a former cult leader and raised moon aware of her godly identity.

Out of gratitude, moon grants her new father figure the "Power of The North Star" and shares a magical bond with him

Their mission now, is to locate the fallen Gods and prepare them for the fight against the looming Cantillian threat.

In summary:

The Rings of Gallilea is a magical Sifi adventure, with sub themes of romance, and drama. The message of The Rings of Gallilea is self-sacrifice, defying fate, humility and mercy along with second chances.

Lets meet our cast!

Luna Abyss- our female lead, Luna is the Goddess of the moon and Magic. Before what Luna refers to as "The Fall" she was regal, elegant and refined. Growing up on earth with her drunkard guardian Victor, and running from government officials who seem to pick up on Luna's signals wherever she goes changed her quite a bit. Luna uses her twin blades Artemis and Frigga to fight off the Cantillian forces sent by recon forces. Luna likes dancing to loud music at ungodly hours, getting fast food at midnight, dogs, and exploring places she probably shouldn't.

Terra Greenwood- Our male lead, Terra is the God of Earth, Nature and humanity. Terra grew up with his Grandma after his dad walked out on his drug-addicted mother. Terra is a member of the Apache Indians, and lives on a reservation in Greenville New Mexico. Terra, despite struggling with depression and minor anger issues, dreams of living a normal life. Getting a good education, a well paying job, taking his grandma and moving far away from Greenville....that Is until Luna shows up. Terra fights with his magic spear Gia, and can command Earth and Nature on a whim. While his abilities are still weak, with some training there is no doubt that Terra can return to his former Glory. Terra enjoys driving his old pickup truck down town, while listening to the hard rock radio station, helping his grandma take care of her garden, and hanging out with his best friends Mitchel and John.

Stella Brighton- our rich mean girl archetype. Stella is the goddess of the Sun. Stella grew up in her mother's mansion sheltered away from the middle and lower class, until one day she forms an unlikely friendship with Terra. An Unlikely friendship turns into an unlikely crush and an unlikely romance. That is until Stella's hopes and dreams are crushed when she discovers her mother and Stepfather have planned an arranged marriage for her. Stella breaks off her relationship with Terra and keeps her head held-high. Stella fights with her fiery bow, Apollo, and can spark a wildfire wherever she pleases. Stella enjoys shopping, traveling, taking selfies, and flaunting her status as Student Council President.

Mitchel James- the Nerd boy archetype, Mitchel is the God of Mercury, Knowledge and Communication (arguably revenge as well) As a young lad, Mitchel idolized his dad, who was in the military. Oftentimes it would be him and his mom while his dad was on deployment. Mitchel took a liking to computer science and technology, because thanks to that he was able to keep in touch with his dad even when he was far away. When Mitchel was 8 years old his dad died in active duty, and it wasn’t long until his mom took to a Sugar Baby lifestyle to try and provide for Mitchel without having to get a job. Mitchel is bullied at school for being the scrawny nerd boy, and takes revenge on his bullies by hacking into their computers and leaking their search history. After Luna rolls into town Mitchel's world is flipped upside down. Suddenly he isn’t armed with just brain-power but physical power. Mitchel fights in a way that is unique to the Rings of Gallilea. Mitchel can create Angels to fight as champions for him. He also uses a Chackram named Athena. Mitchel enjoys hacking into local security cameras to see whats up around town, exploring the dark web, arguing with radical political activists on-line.

John Kingsman- The play-boy Archetype, John is the God of Jupiter Kings, and lightning. John lives what is arguably the best life of anyone in the rings. His parents breed police dogs. Meaning his house is always full of puppies. John's dad is a former military officer, and both him and his mom are current police force members. John is the baby in his family, but is held to high standards. Be home before 7, get good grades, and take care of the dogs. John fights with his Claymore Sword, Odin, along with special abilities like lighting and psychological manipulation. John, obviously enjoys taking the dogs for walks, playing basketball, and going to the shooting range with his mom.

Hotaru Kawaguchi- The goth archetype, and Goddess of Saturn, Time and Death. Hotaru's parents immigrated to the United States after the death of Hotaru's older brother, Hikaru. They came here to give the intellectually gifted Hotaru better opportunities as she grew older. To help support her, the family opened a restaurant in the down town area that quickly became one of the most popular spots in town. Hotaru never really got over Hikaru's death, and took comfort in the macabre. Over summer, Hotaru picks up a second job to earn enough money to afford her dream car, working in an occult shop. She also finds herself involved in an unlikely summer romance. Aside from being able to freeze time and communicate with the dead, Hotaru fights with her staff, Hades, that can transform into a scythe. Hotaru loves books and quite sunny spaces, she likes painting, meditation, watching Elvira specials, and helping her mother and father learn better English.

Aries Vailakis- the Jock archetype, God of Mars and war. Just like Stella he too grew up with rich parents. His family comes a from proud Greek heritage, and own a chain of Mediterranean style restaurants. Aries is a star member of the football team, and is expected to take over the family business when he gets out of college. Most people think there isn't much to Aries other than food and football, sometimes Aries thinks that too. But being a competitive teenage god, can lead to some intense shenanigans. Especially when family, love and blackmail are involved. Aries fights with some seriously thick brass knuckles that spit fire. His brass knuckles can also transform into a large shield, Neiro. Aries likes cooking, working out, watching horror movies with his S/O, and very secretly likes looking at minimalist homes in the Greek countryside in homeowner's magazines.

June Smith, the flip Archetype, Goddess of Venus beauty, seduction and battle. June's mom divorced her dad to be with another man when she was young. Years later June would find out she died of cancer without telling her or her father. Needless to say June had a rough start in life. Given that her dad was the high school principal, she couldn't even act out and punch some nerd in the face. In the day light June masquerades as the nerdy turtleneck loving teacher's pet kinda girl. At night June flips ditching her turtle neck for something low cut and preferably leather. Sneaking out under the ruse of sleep or studying, June slips out to hang out on the edge of town with the local biker gang known as the Black Cat Bikers. Junes got the best of both worlds, her dad wrapped around her finger, and her legs wrapped around the back of her boys bikes. June fights with the sword Atalanta, and can change into any weapon June sees fit. June can also manipulate peoples hormones, making them fall for her or anyone. June will never admit it, but she likes wearing pink fluffy sweaters, she also loves getting fucking drunk, going out to see drag shows, sleeping in until noon, and playing with makeup.

Serena Paisley- The hippy archetype- Serena is the Goddess of Neptune, the ocean and family. Serena is the younger twin sister of Heath. Serena grew up close to her mother, who was somewhat of helicopter parent. Serena’s mother owns a brewing company, and is heavily involved in the Greenvile political scene. growing up in a spotlight Serena wanted to use her spotlight to encourage others to do good, and can often be found doing charity work. One big secret Serena has, is that she is a big fan of smoking weed. being a politicians daughter was a stressful job after all. Serena, can command any body of water and has great people skills. Her very loyal weapon is her trident, Namaka. Serena’s hobbies include Yoga, smoking weed, collecting crystals, playing the pan-flute, and thrift store shopping.

Heath Paisley- The rich boy archetype- Heath is the God of Uranus, Ice, Snow and Vengeance. Heath, is the polar opposite of his sister. He grew up chasing the affections of his long-distance father, who is an actor in Hollywood. Heath has a cold demeanor, and takes a some-what sadistic pleasure in controlling others. He is the student council president at the private school he and Serena attend, Hayden Heights Academy. Heath is secretly insecure about his sexuality, and is in denial about being attracted to men. Heath spends a majority of his time covering for his sisters ‘distasteful shenanigans” in student council meetings, or following in the footsteps of his politician mother. Heath has the power to control Ice, and cold temperatures, he can also force criminals to admit their deeds.Heath fights with twin sickles Poli’Ahu and Endymion.His hobbies include: casual business luncheons, bossing his underclassmen around, and he secretly likes it when his S/O leans over his shoulder while he is trying to work.

Romeo Barns- The rebel archetype- Romeo is the God of Pluto, Alchemy, and Transformation. Romeo has always felt like a social outcast, specifically because he discovered his godly powers at a young age. Romeo lives with his overly preachy preacher uncle, who believes in only one good god above. Romeo, being a sarcastic little shit, decides he needs to be everything his uncle isn't. Romeo sells weed for the Black Cat Biker Gang, his true "Family". Which is how a filthy little grunge rat like him became friends with Serena Paisley. Roemo's godly body grows organic blade-like structures which he can use to defend himself. His clawed-gauntlets, Thanatos and Cerberus add an extra punch. In his spare time Romeo can be seen around town riding his motorcycle. At night he is out spraying unique and vulgar messages on billboards. At school he likes to read the "boring unpopular books" like Catcher in The Rye and Lord of The Flies, and strumming along to his favorite songs on his base guitar

And thats just novel number 1! I'll make a second post about novel number 2 since this is already a quite lengthy post.

Let me know what you guys think, and if you wanna see more.

See ya later

- Vira!

#novel #novelist #writers #writing #writblr #author #sifi #fantasy #meet the characters #gods and goddesses #plot #magic #ocs #oc #oc fanfiction #oc facts

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