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k-s-morgan · 3 years

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Hi! This isn’t an ask, but more of a rambling that I deemed too long for the comments, that stems from your post claiming Book of Circus as your favourite Black Butler episodes. and to that I say - YES. Book of Murder is a masterpiece. It houses one of my favourite scenes - the one where Sebastian says: "This wasn't a scenario decided by God or fate, but one decided on by my master, with timing decided by my master. I was killed by the criminal expected by my master, by the Hione who came to torment my master", which really captures the essence of whole 'Ciel vs God' dynamic that's woven into the duration of the show.

Throughout the plot, there are three major instances in which an offering is made to Ciel - offerings of redemption. The first is from Angela - a chance to purify himself and have an afterlife - which he so vehemently rejects in the knowledge that he quite literally *is* his darkness, and therefore refuses to rid himself of it.

The second is comes from Abberline in his death, where in his final words he tells Ciel he has a chance to take back his future. And Ciel has to watch him die with the knowledge that he has already made up his mind about his fate. I don't think he's so affected because he regrets selling his soul. I don't think he suddenly wants to live, or no longer wishes for revenge. But I believe the reason he is so affected by Abberline's death is because he holds a sentimentality for him that is not dissimilar to the one he feels for Elizabeth. Ciel is cruel, I don't think he regrets the steps he has taken to get to this point, nor the ones he knows he must take in the future. But though he is cruel, I believe he has a sort of fond curiosity for the untainted goodness that characterises those like Abberline and Elizabeth. Like you said before, he feels condescension towards the man perhaps due to the naivety his blind heroism implies, but I think his attachments to him come from an underlying curiosity to see if such goodness can exist in such a corrupted world - a silent hope to be proven wrong in his cynicism. When Abberline dies, that very hope he didn't even know he had gets shattered. It brings about a sort of forced perspective that makes Ciel question himself in ways we haven't seen before.

Abberline's death had been avoidable and it was certainly in vain. Abberline had died for someone who had already made up his mind - someone who had rejected God once before and would do it time and time again as proven in the anime. Ciel is such an interesting character because, although he is dark, he still values the light and makes some sort of effort to preserve it in spite of the contempt he feels for them. It is the thought of dying in vain that seems to bother him so greatly, not death itself. No, Abberline dying isn't enough for him to want to live again, or to even think about throwing away his revenge - that was never in question. But it is enough to extinguish the lingering flicker of hope he had for humanity (despite being so distanced from term himself).

This, combined with the disappointment he feels at Sebastian's actions, causes the existential haze of uncertainty that leads to the third and final offering. And the most surprising thing is that this offering comes from Sebastian himself. He senses the doubt in Ciel and, like every thought the boy experiences, fails to understand it. He mistakes it for him second-guessing his revenge and decides to discontinue their contract. But he isn't angry - that much is clear. Instead, he wishes him to "forget everything and have pleasant dreams", with a rather wistful expression on his face. What this line ends up reading as is a bittersweet goodbye from the demon - an offering for Ciel to let go of his revenge and find happiness in the afterlife with his now soon approaching death. There is almost a strong disappointment in him, but is not resentful of it - Ciel is human and he can't keep expecting him not to be. His offering almost acts as a thank you for the moments of excitement their contract had given his monotone life and I believe that is why he makes it.

He sticks around to see if Ciel accepts his offer, though already expecting him to, and is there to witness the very moment the boy rejects it. Gone is the uncertainty of Abberline's death and the Paris crisis, and Ciel, the Earl of Phantomhive, returns to him - sharper, colder, more ruthless than ever. Sebastian realises his misjudgement and returns to his side, ready for the final battle. Killing an angel. It's laughably symbolic.

The rejections of God, the evasion of the Hope Diamond's curse (where he even wore two rings as if to taunt the fates), the references in Book of Murder - they all depict this metaphorical sort of battle between Ciel and God. And the ending of Kuroshitsuji II is the depicts how he triumphs over fate, claiming his rightful place as an immortalised creature of Hell.

I know I've gone on a bit of a tangent here in your inbox, but that one quote from Book of Murder is so symbolic to me in the way it sets up the comparison between Ciel and God (in which 'God' represents power over fate).

Before I sign off, though, I just want to make light of the existence of the show's final offering, occurring in the last few minutes of the series. This last offering has nothing too do with God, nothing to do with any complex battle between the Phantomhive and fate, but is much simpler than that. In fact, the final offering of the show comes from Ciel, and he gives it to Sebastian - it's almost poetic, is it not?

"Are you sure you don't want to pull it any tighter?"

In this single, unassuming line, Ciel is asking Sebastian if he wants to kill him, and release himself from the eternal contract they've found themselves in. Such a noble and dignified soul as Ciel would always be sure to make through on his word and, despite the loophole that now extends their contract, he would still be willing to let Sebastian kill him should he wish to do so. The man may no longer be able to take his soul, but the boy can still give the order to kill him and free himself. Ciel's respect for Sebastian is complex and contradictory at times, but what never changes is his willingness to die by his hands and see through to his side of the contract.

“Is it over? The one who plunged me into bottomless darkness… I don’t even know why she did it.”

In the episode where Angela is crushed by the Church, Ciel offers his soul to Sebastian. Even when unsatisfied with the result, his unwavering nobility led him to make good on their deal and fulfil his end of the contract. The earl faced the demon, his expression calm, and with a steady voice said “A promise is a promise. Take it.”

This unwavering dignity and nobility he holds in himself I believe is the reason for this offering and Sebastian's turn to reject it is almost a 'love confession' (as you have brought me to see it) in itself.

As a final sort of note - I just wanted to let you know that, since reading your reply to my comment on TGSTLTH (from a while ago), I brought myself to rewatch Kuroshitsuji II with your interpretation in mind and ended up really enjoying it. You've singlehandedly made me do a complete 180 on a season I previously hated - looks like I had just watched it from the wrong perspective. So, for that, I thank you

Hey! Sorry for getting to your ask just now. I absolutely loved it :D And yes, Book of Murder is a masterpiece - I still remember watching it for the first time. It was late at night, I had to go to bed, everyone was sleeping, but I kept watching because stopping just wasn't an option, I had to know what happened next.

Ciel vs God is such an interesting topic. In some ways, Ciel and Sebastian exist in their own universe where there is no place for anyone else. There is a God aka Ciel and a demon aka Sebastian. And they are both allies and adversaries at the same time - they are tormenting each other and uniting to torment others.

I agree absolutely that Ciel holds a fondness for certain people, with Lizzy and Abberline being a good example. He has a degree of contempt and irritation for them, but they do mean something to him. Ciel's curiosity is a big and detached thing, and this places him on Sebastian's level in such an interesting way because sometimes it's almost like Ciel isn't human himself - humanity intrigues him as if he doesn't belong to it. His fascination with the light just underlines his affinity with the darkness.

I have many thoughts about Ciel's behavior during the days following Abberline's death, and you certainly introduced many excellent points! My general opinion on Ciel's motives is... complicated. I agree that he never felt like really giving up his revenge and trying to live a 'happy' life - he knew it's not for him at that stage already. However, I feel like Abberline's parting words affected him a lot, even if briefly. When Abberline tells him that he can start everything from the beginning, Ciel sounds absolutely heartbroken when he confesses, "I don't have a future." The way he acts later, telling Sebastian to stop and not kill the angel, hesitating, reinforces this idea to me. I think you described it best - Ciel is having an existential crisis. It's not like he suddenly regrets his decisions, but he's temporary unanchored and unsure what he wants and what he should do. Having a dream where Abberline urges him to give up his hatred also seems to affect Ciel, but it's so telling that he wakes up and immediately says, "Sebastian." It's a fascinating arc and I can't wait to explore it.

I love your words about three offerings - so true. And I'm so happy you liked S2 when watching it from a new perspective! I used to be so confused as to why people hated it: it's not perfect, but I thought it was amazing in many ways, especially its bittersweet ending.

#black butler #sebaciel #ciel phantomhive #sebastian michaelis #my fics

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its-chelisey-stuff · 3 years

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I watched “Imitation” and it was surprising (... okay, I loved it!)

Full disclosure: If you haven’t the slightest interest in kpop, not even in the drama or juicy gossip that produces, this won’t be your thing. I know it’s not a drama for everyone. Stop reading. Just know that OTP (and most characters) had a happy ending but there was a bunch of drama to achieve it. Typical. And a death may or may not have been in the mix.

Well well well... I'm pleasantly surprised, that's the perfect three word review for this drama. It would seem that when those little projects that come out of nowhere and you have no expectations about, turn out to be even a little big good, they made the strongest impression. And this drama is up there in my top 3 of favorite dramas of the year, it has my heart.

Yes, it was about kpop idols and 90% of the cast was made of idols (even one from the very first kpop gen hahaha), yet the acting was decent (and from some, truly great), yes sometimes it got a bit cheesy and silly and yes, there was a ton of drama concerning fans, reporters, dating scandals and bad and greedy CEOs of entertainment agencies BUT it was also sweet, really romantic, funny, lively, full of music (I'm OBSESSED with the last OST which was sung by the whole cast, it makes me FEEL things) and dancing, it had lots friendship and found family AND at times, it was heartbreakingly tragic.

I think this drama tried to tell the audience two important lessons, worthy of mention: the first, work hard for your dreams, don't give up on them but also, you never know what opportunities might come your way that could end up changing your direction and perhaps make you chase something that you never thought you would, so persevere, breathe and hang in there just a bit more; the second, one that we all know if you have a little bit of sense and even if you are mildly informed about the k entertainment which is that idols are just people(most of them teens when they debut some not even 18) who want to and deserve to have a pretty f-ing normal life, so f-ing let them! the consequences of putting these youngsters over a pedestal are catastrophic and there are real life, heartbreaking, examples of this.

Main characters

Ryok: the Golden Boy of kpop, from the most popular boy group, also a an actor (a decent one? Idk they never said). Perfect in every single aspect, except when he is nice to girls who aren't his fans, then they will crucify him. SUPER clumsy whenever his crush is nearby and does something he finds cute, otherwise super cool and chill. Also great at pining for his crush. A romantic, which means he chose the worst career path. My favorite character.

Maha: A bright and optimistic girl with a strong might of perseverance in going after her dreams. Loves dancing. Very sweet and very tiny. Despite appearances, she's not a pushover or weak FL. And that's why I loved her.

Yujin: Second ML by the book. Became an idol because he was pursuing FL (who in turn was pursuing ML). The only reason why I never hated him is because he was a great friend, knew he wasn't doing anything healthy and decided to end his one sided love and opened his eyes. Two words: Character development *chef's kiss*

LaRiMa: A soloist. A Queen. At the start, it looked like she was the typical and mean second FL. But she wasn't, and I adored her for that. She had a heart of gold. She deserved the world, and she knew that so she made decisions accordingly (a Queen chases no one, least of all a man!) lol best character in the drama and my second favorite character (sorry Maha!)

Also starring: The members of SHAX (the leader, SF9′s Hwiyoung, the maknae from Ateez and the funny guy who spoke random english) the group of Golden Boy. Tea Party members (bffs with FL, Riah and HyunJi), Maha’s group. Sparkling members (the very angry and frustrated leader and two members of Ateez whose names I don’t know), second ML group. AND in the longest and most important cameo (ala Go Kyung Pyo in My roommate is a Gumiho) SF9′s Chani, a former member of SHAX, who disappeared into thin air one day.

The story

On paper it doesn't sound like anything groundbreaking (and tbh it really wasn't lol): a story about idols who willingly chose their career path, trained for years while underage, got treated like products by ugly men in suits and realized it kinda sucked, especially when you don't become a hit group and have to protect your personal life like it's a dirty secret that could damage your image and maybe end your career this is why I said it’s not a show for everyone. But this drama is what Dream High 2 (2012) wanted to be and never could in the aspect of actually making you feel something for these idols and the situations they were facing while loving the musical side of the show and making it all believable.

Even if it's not exactly about teens in high school sort of thing, it does give you the same hopeful and uplifting feeling of a coming of age story, especially because the characters are still youngsters trying to be happy and realize their dreams for the future.

You can just stop reading here if you want to go watch the drama with no spoilers. And if I haven’t convinced you despite not being appalled by kpop themed dramas, then I guess you should keep reading lol or trust in my taste and judgement when I say the story is worth it (but to be fair the first two eps are a bit slow).

The romance (super spoilery!)

At the core, this show was a love story. What started the plot is the fact that main couple reunite in the same work field as idols, and they actually met and befriended each other years ago; so being older and able to spent more time together brings them closer to finally accept and give into their feelings, but soon enough their relationship becomes a ticking bomb threatening their careers and then this big mystery of how and why SF9' Chani disappeared and abandoned the group becomes really important in the last third of the drama

Because once upon a time, Chani had a gf but she was still a trainee so once their love was exposed (the truth of who exposed him is devastating) and their respective companies threatened them, it all becomes too much too fast and with seemingly no other way out, the girl makes a terrible decision, that ends up changing the lives of most of the characters.

I’m sure this is from a bts but their chemistry was really good and sweet. Also, height difference to die for!!

Yet, there is a happy ending for main couple but it's only achieved after certain people learn from their mistakes and support Ryok and Maha, which makes it clear that no matter how in love and willing you are to face adversities for and with your loved one, you still need a support system (and maybe the right people in a position of power) because sometimes two against the world isn't as romantic as it sounds, but sad and lonely.

And the main reason why I loved this is because of the way the show drew a parallel between the two most important couples in the story and tells the audience “had it been even a year before, under different circumstances and less luck, had they had no friends and no people to support them, main couple would’ve ended in the same tragic way” and I think that is a haunting realization. That also makes you appreciate things.

*cries* they were adorable

The bad (spoilers!)

I do wish this drama would’ve elaborated on some bits that were really worth diving into, or that it would’ve shown how some things came intro fruition instead of just skipping it and showing rigth away the outcome of conversations that were never had or reunions never shown. It is clear to me that they wanted to make the drama longer and could have told a better story had it been a 16 ep show.

Basically yes, the main story, main romance and side couples' arcs got resolved but ugh a list of plot holes:

Why was LaRiMa so obsessed with Ryok for half the drama? The minute the girl knew he was dating someone he truly liked, she gave up right away, so I gotta believe the only reason she didn’t quit on him before, is because he did gave her a reason to hold onto him. Perphaps they dated before? Or maybe they like each other at one point? I can only do fanfiction in my head to explain this.

Why was the angry leader of Sparkling such a bitter bitch? How did he end up in another company?

I wanted to see SF9′s Chani reunion with his ex-members from SHAX. It NEEDED to happen. At least they showed Chani with Ryok (which was really emotional) but arrgh.

Also, Chani deserved a kneeling apology from SHAX leader, I mean, come on!!

If everyone knew about Maha and Ryeok at some point, they needed to use that. You can’t just have a bomb like that in your drama and not use it. Is a principle of storytelling. You can’t just have the thing that your main characters fear the most, in your hands, and do nothing about it. But I guess it was not done because of lack of time.

Also, they never showed how they announced their relationship. Instagram post? Company statement? An exclusive to Dispatch? And how did the fans took it?? Answers, drama! Damn it!!

Final thoughts

Despite its many flaws, I loved it. It had heart. It seemed low budget and even more so due to the fact that it was done in the middle of the pandemic and a big part of kpop are the fans and concerts, you know what makes it all the more big and shinier. But the drama people and the actors put effort into it, and you could tell (and the fact that there were also original songs and choreographies made for this drama amazes me, and that they chose to promote the drama by having some of these fake groups perform on actual music shows). So there you go, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Before I finish, let me just say that the actor who played Ryok is a REVELATION in my eyes.This boy needs to stay in dramaland and get more main roles (and after some research I’m happy to say that he is thriving!!). Also, he has great timing for comedy. The actress who played Maha elevated the quality of every scene she was in. (Not for nothing she was God in DAYS). Jiyeon (LaRiMa) was excellent. It really showed at times that she’s not only an experienced idol but also an experienced actress. The contrast with most of the cast was noticeable, sadly. The drama wouldn’t have been the same without these three.

Also, watch AND listen to the last OST sung by the whole cast here. Beautiful song that just makes you cry if you’ve seen the drama.

#imitation #lee jun young #jung jiso #jiyeon #jeong yunho #kbs imitation #kdrama #kdrama review #i wanted to tag all actors but omg that's a nightmare #they're too many

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rialynne · 5 years

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Little Women Review

I’m feeling incredibly motivated to do this so here we go. To set it up, yes I read little women as a kid and I saw the 1994 version years ago prior to my first viewing. I watched the 1933 and 1949 versions and the 1994 version again before the second viewing.

TLDR: Go watch this Movie I love it, imma buy this blu ray. To me despite structural changes this is the definitive movie adaptation of Little Women.

So initial personal reasons why I’ve always enjoyed this story is that it takes place in Mass; my cousins live in Concord, I grew up in New England and they definitely filmed in New England cause certain scenes. We still have old style buildings around like they have in the film and the landscape, especially for scenes in the fall were absolutely beautiful. Marmee even name drops my home state at one point so shout out there.

Greta Gerwig did an absolutely fantastic job with the adapted screenplay of this movie and I am quite the fan of her decision to split up the structure of the novel and create more flash back sequences to emphasize different events that took place and how that impacted characters. I think the decision to film with a yellow warm tone in the past compared with a blue, cool tone in the adulthood scenes was a smart move as a visual way to explicitly indicate which timeline we are in. The fashion of the ladies and the hairstyles definitely did help with the timeline as well. I also love how they designed the girls hair style and clothing when they were younger to have a piece of Marmee’s style with them to signify a piece of Marmee is in each of her daughters. I also really loved the way that scenes played out, how they were shot, how when a bunch of them where showing conversations that could happen in real life. The dynamics of the march sisters remind me of my own family and there are a few scenes where there was like multiple conversations going on at once and I loved that. Also I love the sound track its on par with the 2005 Pride & Prejudice soundtrack.

For the more minor roles:

Meryl Streep did her thing as Aunt March and was quite hilarious, I loved how she was like no kisses plz and her whole you need to marry wealthy and I didn’t get married cause I’m rich bit. Mr. Lawrence has a beautiful character arc especially with Beth. He did so well with that small role and he really made you feel for the loss of his daughter. John Brook was the sweet respectful man for his wife. Friedrich Bhaer was good as well. Not as many scenes of him as I was previously expecting but I bought the connection he and Jo had and he definitely proved to be an intellectual match for him.

Laura Dern was an excellent Marmee. She really brought the presence that she was the giving, calming presence for all her daughters, especially for Jo. I absolutely love the conversations she had with Jo about her always being angry and for talking to Jo about her not really being in love with Laurie. I felt like that conversation is a really important lesson for everyone to determine if they want to marry someone, to make sure they do marry some one cause they do truly love them and not cause they want to be loved. Mr. Dashwood, the new york city publisher was also a great addition to this story in terms of representing the way publishers were back in the day.

I loved how connected they made all the March sisters feel. They really did make them all feel like one unit in their younger years, that it hurt much more when they are older when their apart. I really Loved watching Jo especially interact with all her sisters and seeing how the dynamics changed over the years. With Meg she relates to her being the oldest siblings and the scene where they talk about their different goals in life right before Meg gets married. Its a lovely scene indicating not one’s goals in life are better than another persons goals. I Love how she cares so much for Beth and looks out for her. The dynamics of Jo and Amy’s relationship was fascinating to watch cause it reminded me a lot of me and my sister and how we bickered a lot, but still deeply care for one another, and eventually were able to respect one another.

I knew going into this movie that Saoirse Ronan was going to kill it as Jo, and she flipping delivered. I love her portrayal as Jo where she is not as too much as the 1933 and 1949 portrayals and yet was very ambitious and likable, very similar to the 1994 portrayal from Winona Ryder. I loved her speech with Marmee about how great women are and how she doesn’t have a life goal to get married but how she is very lonely. That hit hard. Her negotiating for her royalties to her book was a great addition to the end of the story. I feel as if she plays a certain type of character in her movies, but she does it sooo well and in a way that no one else can do justice for it. The relationship between Jo and Amy and Jo and Laurie were great to watch. Amy and Jo are so similar besides a few key differences, and those differences help make their tension believable and turns them into remarkable characters.

I love the take on Beth in this adaptation. They still play her as a sweet and caring individual, one that ultimately leads to her getting sick and dying, but they give her a little more quirky traits and have her say some funny one liners. She has a lot of subtle moments with Jo and Amy especially that makes their reactions to her death feel so real. Emma Watson did a much better job than i expected and gave a surprising amount of depth to Meg. I did really enjoy the sub plot of her buying that fabric for a dress. $50 back then was like close to $1000, and really does show her struggle with wanting to have nice things once in a while. Her speech to Jo about her desires to be a wife and a mother is beautiful. Meg I feel is a difficult role to play due to her calm presence and lack of a super extroverted like personality and Emma made it her own.

Timothee Chalamet is a fantastic Laurie. He did well in balancing Laurie’s immature and lazy side to him while making him endearing. Seeing his love for the March family grow over time was beautiful. His relationship with Jo and Amy were awesome. With Jo, they are a great example of a platonic friendship, especially from when this book was published. I really loved the rejected proposal on the hill. You can see Jo still resisting adulthood still from her sister’s wedding, even when Laurie proposes I think she sees that as the end of childhood for her. Along with that she never had an interest to get married and expresses that she doesn’t love him like that and why they wouldn’t make a good match. The argument doesn’t feel like unrequited love but more like two best friends having a disagreement. His scenes with Amy also highlight his path to adulthood and him learning about love in the process.

AMY MARCH FINALLY GOT HER DUE! About damn time she did. Amy is my favorite character from this adaptation and is the one that surprised me the most. Lord FLORENCE PUGH needs to get a damn nomination because she was fucking amazing. For me she was able to convincingly play a young and adult Amy so well. Amy is a woman who knows what she wants in life and is very determined to get them and work within the current societal circumstances she is in. She is able to push her ego aside to get what she wants. She is so cheeky and energetic when she is younger but becomes more refined and tactful when older. Her burning Jo’s book did indicate her jealousy of her sister and the immaturity of her emotions that over time she has a grip on more as an adult. Her relationship with Aunt March indicates the idea and pressure she has to take care of the rest of her family. When she has her economic proposition speech, you really see how this is adding so much pressure on her, pressure that does influence her choices and behavior later on.

But, my absolute favorite part about Amy’s development over the movie was her relationship with Laurie. I’m so happy Greta really took the time to flush out this relationship. I really love these two together. They are both a really great example of love that evolves over time. The little tid bits in the past with the small moments of Amy and her small crush over Laurie: THE FOOT MOLD, the way young Amy looks at Laurie, her drawing of him at the beach while flirting with Fred Vaughn, talking about how hot he is as a half Italian. All of that was perfection. Everything in Paris with these too was also sooo fantastic. I love it that prim and proper 20 year old lady Amy turns into a kid again when she sees Laurie and just jumping and hugging him, and then Laurie is all like you’re beautiful. when she invites him to the ball and he kisses Aunt March. Her being all like “its Laurie!” and looking back at him with that damn smile, the things that make my heart melt. With Amy and Laurie knowing each other for so long, Amy is able to be real with him and call him out throughout their time in Paris, mainly at the ball when his drunken fuckboi ass waltz in. Also The PAINTING ROOM, lawrd. Amy still shitting on Laurie for his behavior, their conversation about love, Amy’s speech on economic proposition, THE UNBUTTONING OF THE PAINTING SMOCK (that absolutely rivals the Pride & Prejudice 2005 hand touch in terms of sexual tension), Amy being able to be her true self around Laurie, Laurie telling Amy “You look beautiful...you are beautiful” (SWOOON). Then when they at the park: Amy scolding him for being lazy and not taking charge and being responsible, Amy drawing him again and showing him the older picture, Laurie telling Amy not to marry Fred “don’t marry him. Why? you know why.”, Amy realizing what hes implying and being all like Naw don’t you dare fam I’ve always been second to Jo “I won’t do it. Not when I have spent my entire life loving you.”. Laurie finally grew a pair and went off to London to make something of himself and Amy turning down Fred’s proposal realizing she wants to marry for love. Them reuniting in Paris after Beth dies, and being alike i wont let you travel alone even if you despise me, which Amy says she doesn’t despise him. And she states she aint marrying Fred and then rambles on and LAURIE KISSES HER GOD BLESS HE DO LOVE HER. and wow. Their love story is one of the most satisfying love story arcs I’ve seen in a long time.

Any ways that’s my long ass Review of Little Women 2019. GO watch it in theaters if you can. I will buy it and stream it when it comes out of theaters. This is the definitive adaptation for me and I think it will hold up well as an amazing period drama for years to come.

#little women #little women 2019 #jo march #amy x laurie #amy march #laurie #theodore lawrence #beth march #marmee #meg march #movie review

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godsofhumanity · 4 years

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GODHUNTER by AMY SUMIDA | REVIEW

okiee this was recommended to me by @inkleaves ^-^ uhmm so i have a LOT to say about this book. spoilers under cut.

OVERVIEW: “Godhunter” is the epithet given to a young woman named Vervain who uses witchcraft and magic to go around committing deicide in order to save humanity from gods who drain their energy to gain immortality and other godly attributes. However, when Vervain is recruited by the Norse god Thor, she finds herself in an alliance with the people she originally considered her enemies, as they work together to save the world from the maliciousness of the Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli.

RATING: 2/10. i’m giving it a low rating because it doesn’t really have too much to do with mythology, but i did like its general portrayal of most deities even though this book was insanely cringey and dumb.. now, even though under the cut, i’ve kinda bashed the book quite a bit, i still have to admit that i’d be lying if i said i didn’t have fun reading it. i stayed up to 1 AM trying to finish it because i had to find out what the protag’s next stupid decision would be,, all in all, if you like trash/cringe fiction- this is for you.

WARNING: even though this book is a YA novel, I’d say there’s a definite emphasis on the adult part of “young adult”... Certain scenes and themes are inappropriate for minors.

AVAILABLE ON: pdf link here ^-^ ((i think it downloads immediately if you click))

THINGS I LIKED:

the book is cringe.

great diversity in terms of the god cast. i learned about some new deities that i was previously unfamiliar with, so that was cool

Brahma (Hindu deity) wears a Gucci belt as part of his attire ^-^

whatever Estsanatlehi and Tsohanoai (Native American deities) had going on.... they were really cute and wholesome

THOR-HORUS BROTP AGENDA!!!!!!!! everyone who follows me already knows how keen i am about this idea of all the war deities hanging out together (fite club), and this novel served up exactly that. disappointing that Huitzilopochtli wasn’t a part of it, but i am settling for Thor and Horus’ several centuries old friendship.

Horus’ falcon tattoo detail.. i LOVE the idea of the gods having their sacred animals tattooed,, it’s so awesome!!!

Pan... i liked the way he still had his little horns, and he was kinda chaotic and fun.

in general, the descriptions of the gods were so pleasant and so cool.. i really liked the way that pretty much all the gods were beautiful,, this is very much in line with my own idea of how the gods look, and i think it makes sense, because they’re meant to be charismatic, compelling beings- beings that you worship, beings that you praise- why would they be anything but beautiful? and even if they were considered ugly by other gods, that’s only in comparison to other deities.. from a human perspective,, i just can’t see how any mortal could consider a god to be anything less than perfection,, idk

in particular- i really enjoyed the descriptions of Huitzilopochtli in his debut. i know he’s a piece of shit in the novel, but i LOVED the way he was described with his war-frenzy being triggered by blood, and the way, as god of the sun, his body almost glows, and heats up as though you’re looking into the sun itself, and the only way he can cool it down is by bathing in blood... WOWOWOWOW it’s just such a neat and fantastic visual description. his physical appearance really paid tribute to Huitzilopochtli’s original domain and attributes.

i also liked the linking between Huitzilopochtli being the Father of Vampires.. links between Aztec culture and vampirism is a trope that i didn’t originally suspect, but have become exposed to quite a bit as of late,, and i think that it’s quite a clever little plot. i liked that Huitzilopochtli also debunks superstitions about the sun, garlic, crosses, holy water etc.

Huitzilopochtli as the villain. the man makes a BRILLIANT villain- his motives are very clear and also, i thought, justified, albeit unoriginal. his presence is quite terrifying, and the reader does worry for Vervain’s safety whenever she’s with him- which is good! this means that he fills out his role as a villain well. tbh,, i did love Huitzilopochtli from the moment of his debut, but he got knocked out of my books during a certain temple scene and i have some thoughts about that in the next section.

when Vervain wakes up after the temple dream with Huitzilo, and she relaxes because it was just a dream, but then she looks into the mirror and sees bite marks on her neck!!! CHILLS! now THAT was good writing- it was unexpected, and served well to navigate into the next part of the plot.

Odin and Huitzilopochtli holding a ted talk on “how to create panic and discord among the humans”, and the gods having to bring certain meals depending on what the first letter of their names were.

Vervain’s pop-culture references, and her weaponry- especially the gloves that have blades in them that get released when she swings her hand downwards. very cool, i want them.

casual appearances from Vladimir Putin (yes, i said Vladimir Putin)... i couldn’t stop laughing when i read that Huitzilo was trying to kill Putin’s daughter to instigate a war...... asdhshajdhasdjfhjdhf insane

also i know Vervain was trying to mock Huitzilo when she nicknamed him “Blue”,, but like.. that’s a really cute name and it wasn’t even insulting.. yeah, that one backfired on you Vervain... if anything, that just made it seem like she actually had affections for him and i feel like probably in part is the reason why he felt encouraged to pursue her.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE/THINGS THAT DIDN’T MAKE SENSE AND/OR CONFUSED ME:

the book is cringe.

it reads like a 15 year old’s fantasy AU where she’s a humble young woman, unextraordinary- yet somehow, she is the muse of every man’s desire. handsome, ripped gods who never wear clothes are laying themselves down at her feet,, and she is just overwhelmed by the choices before her; and all the while, she has to balance a complicated love life with her duty to save the world (since she’s the only one who can).

Vervain as a protagonist. idk how old she’s meant to be, but since the book is in first-person, and the reader is exposed to her innermost thoughts,, i’ve gotta say- she’s incredibly immature. as a protagonist, i just feel like she’s rude, pretentious, snobby.. she has no idea what “respect” even means. in every scene, she’s either fighting someone, or lusting after them (when Teharon told her off for having lascivious thoughts about him, and she simply responded with “well stop being so sexy then” i wanted to die.... WHAT is wrong with her)

i hate the way she looks down on the gods- even if you didn’t worship them, or even believed in their existence, surely you wouldn’t have the gall to lecture Hades and Persephone on how to be a good couple (especially when your advice is shit). surely you wouldn’t have the gall to say to Thor what Vervain says to him on pg 227, 4th line from the bottom, that i will not repeat here. Vervain is just too self-absorbed. i don’t hate her, but i definitely think her character is a bit,,, iffy.

relating to Vervain as the protagonist- everything just seems to happen to her.. and i know that she’s the protag, and things are meant to happen to her, but it all happens to her one after the other in succession, no breaks. it’s so easy for her... oh? Huitzilopochtli is going to kill Putin’s daughter? no worries, Vervain can read Huitzilopochtli’s thoughts! oh? the gods have never been able to transform more than half their body into their animal form? no worries, Vervain is so powerful she can force a god to change against their will! oh? Vervain is being attacked by blood-thirsty wolves? no worries, she saved the life of one werewolf and now he’s indebted to her and will literally kill himself in order to protect her! everything is easy, and nothing is a problem.

the way every male deity ever sees Vervain once and immediately wants to take her to bed. why was that a necessary aspect of her character? and also, why are the gods portrayed as such lustful beings?? it really wasn’t necessary.

Horus throwing a fit about how December 25 is his birthday and that it was stolen from him by Jesus... to quote:

“No big deal?” Horus puffed up. “I was called the Lamb of God. I had twelve apostles, and my myths spoke of my crucifixion and consequent resurrection in three days. His stories were my stories first!”

it’s fine that Horus is angry about his birthday which was i think, historically celebrated around this date- but the rest of it isn’t even true???? Horus didn’t have 12 apostles, i’m pretty sure he was also not called “Lamb of God”, and he wasn’t crucified!!! aghhhh even Thor says “It’s been so long that even you don’t remember things accurately.”

anyways.. my beef with this is the way it’s phrased so as to imply that “oh christianity just stole everything from the pagans” when this is so incredibly false and sounds like something an ill-informed person would say. you can read more about christianity, paganism and christmas here

kinda related to the previous point- the jokes about Jesus’ skin colour. i quote:

“... when Christ first became a god, he looked Jewish because those were the people he chose to align himself with. However, the Jews didn’t want him, and when Christianity spread, the white people wanted Jesus to look more like them. With the change in belief, Christ’s appearance changed. ... We used to tease him about how he looked whiter every time we saw him... Kind of like Michael Jackson...”

what the FUCK??????? seems like Sumida doesn’t understand that various ethnic groups illustrate Jesus as appearing as the local people do. Yes, obviously in a Western country, Jesus is going to look European, he’s going to look white. If you go to Japan, you will see Jesus and the rest of the gang looking pretty fucking Japanese. the point of this is NOT to erase Jesus’ Jewish ethnicity, and it is certainly not because of something like “the Jews didn’t want him”- it is because it is a way for followers to better relate to the Divine. including Christ in this story isn’t the problem- i’ve seen others do it very well. the problem is how uneducated her writing comes across.

all the gods have human jobs so that they can earn money and stuff,, which is fine- Thor, for example, owns a line of boats, which makes sense. but Pan? his job is making p*rn. now even though it’s true that everyone associates Pan with sexuality and stuff,,, this isn’t his primary role, and making Pan out to be just a playboy who has his mind in the gutter 24/7 i think is a bit of a mockery. Pan is, first and foremost, a god of the Wild. why Sumida elected to make him a p*rn manufacturer and not a wildlife conservationist is beyond me... i’m not even pagan, and i thought this creative decision was distasteful and stupid, especially because his character is actually quite light-hearted and cool.

the temple scene with Huitzilopochtli and Vervain. as i said previously, i really really liked Huitzilo’s character. he made an excellent villain. but this part?? i understand why it was done, but i HATED that it had to happen... not just because it was horrible for Vervain, but Huitzilo seemed so powerful and godly right up to that point- after which he seemed pretty pathetic- going back after Vervain after she’s rejected him countless times. she is JUST a mortal!!! c’mon Huitzilo, give it up!!! you are degrading yourself at the expense of achieving one mortal’s “love”.. the fact that he had to hypnotise her to get what he wanted AND had to achieve it through her dreams (when’s she can’t protect herself) was sooooo pathetic and disgraceful.. IMO, he committed the worst sin any person could ever commit and i just... AGHHHHHHHHH SMH WHY?!

speaking of morons- Thor. Thor just comes across to me as extremely possessive, and over-protective,, and idk how Vervain was NOT creeped out by the fact that Thor had literally been stalking her for two years before she even met him. wtf? god or not- that’s creepy. actually, i think it’s creepier because he is a god.

Sif. i am still waiting for good media representation of thunder god Thor and his beautiful golden-haired wife Sif- i want them to be HAPPY, and i want them to be in love the way they should be!

Persephone. i like the idea of Persephone being sweet-tempered, and kind- but in this book, she’s such a wimp??????? she totally just lets Vervain be rude to her, a goddess who’s name means “Bringer of Destruction”. also- her relationship with Hades seems toxic.. i mean,, he like tracks her? she starts stuttering when she talks to him, and gets nervous when people so much as mention his name. not to mention the fact that Persephone says that when she does go back to him, all he demands from her is a certain horizontal dance so much so that she is “sore” (<- quoting from the book here) every time she returns??????? WHAT IS HAPPENING?????????? and no one even questions it. Vervain doesn’t even question it! instead she suggests that Persephone MOVES IN with Hades permanently???? and that Hades should just start verbally saying how much he loves Persephone instead of “showing” her how much he “loves” her.....??? there are SO many issues with this.. i can’t even- *screams*

the Aphrodite-is-madly-in-love-with-Huitzilopochtli side plot. it could have been really good, but then it ends so abruptly,,, i mean.. why’d Aphrodite get done so dirty like that? Also summary of Hephaestus’ first and final scenes:

Hephaestus, entering the room: Right, what’s all this then? Vervain: Your wife is cheating on you (again) Hephaestus: Aight, i’m out *leaves and never comes back for the rest of the book*

what the HECK was the ending with Trevor?? i hate Vervain so much i can’t... okay first of all- WHY did Trevor decide to have a wolf-marriage with Vervain?? he kept on going on about how she’s so beautiful, and kind, and caring... NO SHE ISN’T TREVOR!!! i’m so mad that he would pledge himself for all eternity to this girl who doesn’t even like him in that way!!! you played yourself son

also- Thor accepts the fact that Trevor is going to have to be close by to Vervain because the terms of the marriage state that Trevor will literally die without her touch, which is VERY GENEROUS of Thor... but Vervain?? ooooh i HATE her.. she has the audacity to look at Trevor with her lecherous eyes thinking about lustful things IN THOR’S OWN BED!!!!! and then she thinks to herself “oh whoops i shouldn’t be thinking that”- yeah you’re darn right you shouldn’t be thinking that!!!! whatttt is wrong with her.............

also- where tf did Huitzilo go??? he just gave up on trying to instigate a war and vanished?? the plot was so unresolved?????? AGH!

#also- i forgot but- the Brad Pitt looking guy on the front cover.. i thought maybe that was meant to be Ull because he's blonde but i guess #it really was Thor in the end?? but Thor in the novel has red hair so what's up with that? how disappointing #person who reviewed this and said ''Vervain's one of the best female heroines today!''- can i have some of whatever you're smoking?#she's so horrible!!! aghhhhh #review #godhunter by amy sumida #long post

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sage-nebula · 4 years

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Hoo boy. So there is . . . a lot going on here.

So, just as in the show itself, Viren goes to Harrow with the soulfang serpent a second time with the intent on sacrificing himself to save Harrow’s life (with the main difference being that his intention is spelled out here, thanks to getting to see his side of the narration, though it was obvious enough in the show, I think). We see in the narration that Viren feels that the choice to sacrifice himself is coming from a place of love. He thinks, though he cannot bring himself to say, I love you to Harrow. He thinks that his ambitions mean nothing in the face of that love. (And as much as he says that he thinks of Harrow as his brother . . . yeah, nah, I’m not buying that here any more than I bought in the show. In fact, I buy it even less considering Viren has already taken one dig at Sarai in this book already.)

But . . . well, two things. Actually, three.

Earlier in the book, Viren comes to the decision to sacrifice himself for Harrow after having a discussion with Claudia in front of the post-coronation portrait of himself and Harrow, just as in the show. Viren remarks to Claudia that Harrow saw Viren as someone who would always stand by him through anything, and then wonders to himself if he (Viren) is still that same “fiercely loyal” high mage who would do just that. He wonders if he’s still the same man in the painting, despite all that’s happened. He then makes the decision to sacrifice himself, though of course he doesn’t say this to Claudia directly.

So right off the bat, Viren comes to the decision to sacrifice himself because he wants to prove something, at the very least to himself. He wants to prove that he’s fiercely loyal to Harrow and will stand by him and do anything for him, no matter what. He’s making a point out of this sacrifice, meaning that even if he is doing it because he loves Harrow, he has another reason for doing it as well—an ulterior motive.

But if you look at the highlighted passages, you’ll see that there’s a bit more to it than that. Viren’s narration speaks of how he loves Harrow. I love you, I will die for you. But as much as he says to himself, repeatedly, that he’s doing this for Harrow out of love . . . the narration also makes it clear that the reason he isn’t being upfront with his offer isn’t because of nervousness, but because it’s more important to him that Harrow understands that Viren is doing this because he loves him, because he’s not just a subject making a sacrifice to his king, but that it’s personal. Viren being there in the room at that moment isn’t about him making the ultimate sacrifice—it’s about Harrow seeing the depth of Viren’s feelings, appreciating and feeling grateful for them, and (judging by the second to last highlighted section) returning them. It’s not, “I want to do this for you,” it’s, “I want you to know why I’m doing this for you and to think very highly of me because of it.”

In other words: It’s not exactly what one would call an entirely selfless sacrifice.

And truth be told, it’s highly arguable that Harrow knows that. In both the show and this novelization, it’s unclear whether Harrow knows precisely what Viren was going to offer. The feeling I always got from the show was that Harrow did figure it out, and sort of over-acted his anger on purpose in order to shut it down, because he didn’t want Viren to die in his place, either. Here that’s still a possibility, but given Viren’s narration and how he won’t make the offer outright because he wants Harrow to know just how great he is for making it, Harrow’s accusations of Viren thinking he’s special are cast in a new light. Because Viren does think he’s special, or at least, he wants to be special. Check out the second to last paragraph again:

He’d been stupid to even consider making this sacrifice. The king didn’t consider him a brother, or even a friend. In the king’s eyes, he was worthless. Nothing.

While I think it’s perfectly understandable that Viren is hurt by the idea that Harrow doesn’t care about him (whether or not that’s true), the fact of the matter is that this is not a silly situation, like offering to lend your friend a place to stay, or offering to let them use your car to help them move. Harrow is going to die. And if Viren was offering to die in his place purely out of love, purely out of a desire to save Harrow’s life because he loved him and couldn’t bear for him to die, then it wouldn’t matter how hurt his feelings were in the moment. It wouldn’t matter, because it wouldn’t be about what Harrow thought of Viren, but rather, what Viren thought of Harrow.

But we see here that this is clearly not the case. Harrow being angry at Viren means that, in Viren’s eyes, Harrow “didn’t deserve the loyalty Viren had been prepared to offer.” Harrow being angry at Viren means that Viren was “stupid to even consider making this sacrifice.” Harrow being angry at Viren means that Harrow is Viren’s “former friend.” Harrow being angry at Viren means, in Viren’s eyes, that Harrow deserves to die.

All of this, when combined with the fact that Viren’s feelings toward Harrow change so violently and so immediately, point to the fact that even though Viren told himself repeatedly that he was doing this out of love for Harrow, he . . . wasn’t really. Or at the very least, that he wasn’t doing this out of selfless love for Harrow. He was doing this because he wanted Harrow to think and feel a certain way about him. He was doing this because he did consider himself special, or wanted to be special, and when that was denied him, he became furious on the spot. Harrow is denying Viren something that Viren thinks he deserves, and for that, Harrow is his former friend that Viren is plotting against even as he kneels before him. Considering that, is it any wonder he denied Harrow the customary seven days of mourning that all Katolian kings are due?

There is definitely a lot of depth to Viren’s character (as there are to all the characters in The Dragon Prince), and I don’t doubt that Viren felt that his love for Harrow was sincere. But as someone who has both watched the show and is now reading this book, I can say with certainly that Viren is an unreliable narrator and that his behavior betrays his words. He may think that his love for Harrow is sincere, but it’s clear that it’s not selfless, and definitely doesn’t run as deep as he’d like to believe if he can switch it off on a dime. But either way, I knew I couldn’t let this pass without commenting on it, because every time I tried to read on I kept flipping back to these pages. There’s definitely a lot to unpack . . . and only more to come, I’m sure.

#the dragon prince #viren #king harrow #book one: moon #the dragon prince spoilers #tdp spoilers #book one: moon spoilers #meta #the man literally went from ''i love you'' to ''fuck him he's my former friend'' in the span of 2.5 pages #and the text is big these are not long pages #and tbh it's really even just one page because he's all ''I love you'' on one page #and then on the VERY NEXT PAGE he's like ''Harrow doesn't deserve my loyalty!''#because . . . Harrow got mad at him. and reminded him that he's not ''special''#Viren's like the whitest white man to ever white man istg #Black man gets mad at white man and refuses him #white man is then like ''fuck you die then''#''how dare you not be grateful to me!!!''#jfc #long post for ts

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howtohero · 3 years

Text

#300.1: Saving the World Part 1

Prologue

The Haberdashery

“Hi, my name is Murk. I am a mud monster and a product of mad science, but I am also an accountant and a lover of classical music. For most of my existence I have tried to simply live a regular life in an increasingly strange world.”

The conference room in Hatman’s Haberdashery was filled with all manner of colorfully clad, or just plain colorful, superheroes, super-trainees, monsters, vampires, werewolves, sewer-mutants, Da Vincis and even a smattering of regular civilians who looked tired, angry, but overall fearless. According to Leonardo Da Vinci II, an android duplicate of the original from the far future, there had never been such an eclectic gathering of people in all of history. They had gathered — or been gathered — because the world, and life as they all knew it, hung in the balance. The world’s supervillains, led by a formerly low rate smuggler named Smuggles, had managed to do the unthinkable, they’d taken over the world, and in doing so they’d imprisoned most of the world’s heroes, world leaders, and superhero bloggers, in a secret prison. The oddball assembly was the Resistance, and at the moment each of them had their eyes on Murk. Some looked at him with confusion, he was by far the most eloquent mud monster they’d ever heard. Some looked at him in awe, over the past several weeks, Murk had rescued many of them from danger and had inspired them to join him in his fight. A few looked at him with pride, they knew him from before you see, and as far as they were concerned, that made his heroics their heroics.

(“I know that guy from before,”) Parenthetical Guy whispered to the warthog-mask wearing man sitting to his left. (“And as far as I’m concerned, that makes his heroics my heroics.)

{“I work with that guy, he does my taxes,”} Curly whispered, nudging Hatman who was looking forlornly toward the room’s exit. There were far too many people between him and it, and it was causing him no shortage of distress.

“When the heroes fell,” Murk continued. “It immediately became apparent that I, and many others like me, could no longer afford the luxury of standing to the side. For a long time I, and many of my ‘monstrous’ ilk have been more than happy to allow superheroes to handle the world’s problems for us. Whenever our homes, our lives, our world came under threat we all said to one another, ‘well, that looks like a job for superheroes,’ and we declined to act. When the heroes fell I saw how selfish I had been. And so I would like to be the first to extend my heartfelt thanks, and my sincerest apologies to the brave heroes who have gathered here today. I, along with my partner and friend, Lawyer Guy have gathered as many civilians as we could. Regular monsters and people who have cowered from or turned a blind eye to the acts of the villains who have dared to subjugate us, and we have come here to offer our assistance. If you’ll have us, we would like to help in any way we can.”

His speech concluded, Murk quickly sat down next to Lawyer Guy who smiled warmly at him. A few people sitting near him muttered polite words of affirmation toward the hulking mud man but everyone quickly became silent once more as somebody else strode to the head of the table.

Everybody in the room, everybody in the world, recognized the gold and white costume, the chiseled, stony features, and the piercing blue eyes of Ultiman. He was the superhero par excellence and when he clapped Murk on the shoulder and smiled widely, Murk’s ragtag civilian crew let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Thank you Murk,” Ultiman said. “Thank you everyone. As I’m sure you can see, our numbers are small but our members are dedicated and we are thrilled to be able to count each of you among us. I’m confident that, working together, we can depose Smuggles and his entire Consortium of Crime.”

***

Smuggles’s Secret Prison

My name is Zachary Schechter and I’d been locked up for a while by the time anybody had made any noise about breaking out. You may know me as the creator, author, and only functioning brain behind How To Hero. Actually you definitely know me as that. It’s a very popular blog. Just take my word on this ok? I was in a secret prison because I allowed my subordinates to talk me into hiring a known supervillain to, let’s see, live in our basement and interject unwanted comments into my blog. As it would happen, this supervillain, Smuggles, took the job as part of some kind of protracted and complicated plan to take over the world. I should have seen that coming of course. That’s basically the only reason any supervillain does anything. For a few weeks I was alone there. Just sitting in a cell twiddling my thumbs. Trying to make conversation with the drones they had guarding the place. The only thing they’d given me to eat is fish. I imagine Chuck the Fish Whisperer had something to do with that. Frikkin supervillains and their sycophantic dedication to their own themes. But then a ton of superheroes ended up there with me, and I knew things on the outside had taken a decisive turn for the worse. The heroes were all stripped of their costumes and gear, and were given supervillain costumes instead. It’s all spikes, horns, and red contact lenses now. It’s a bit silly, but I think the idea is that if the heroes are dressed like villains and forced to do things like play evil charades and watch movies about heroes turning bad, then some of them might actually turn evil. Actually, I know that’s the idea, but I’ll get to that later. Eventually Cowboy Rockstar, the coolest hero of all time, decided to stage some kind of jailbreak. Which was great. And he wanted me to help him plan it, probably because of my proven expertise in all manner of superhero related topics. I bet it was my treatise on the many superheroic uses of drills that got his attention. There was just one teeny tiny problem though...

“So what do you think?” Cowboy Rockstar whispered.

“I think… I think that I designed this prison,” I whispered dejectedly.

“I beg your pardon?”

It was recreation time once again, and Giorgio the Evil Mime had selected an assortment of clips of superheroes becoming evil from various films and TV shows. It’s really shocking how many times Hollywood has returned to the well of “a superhero clad in red, white, and blue murders a person.” We must’ve watched like thirty different clips already.

“Look, Mr. Rockstar, I appreciate you coming to me and all. It’s an honor to meet you and plot in hushed voices with you and everything. But I’m like 90% certain that I designed this prison. And I don’t know about you but Iitalics certainly wouldn’t have designed a prison that people could break outitalics of.”

Cowboy Rockstar furrowed his brow, “Ah, you’re saying this prison is… from your blog?”

I held up my hands defensively. “Hey, I know how it sounds but look around you. The costumes, the robots, the charades. It’s literally ripped straight from my post about running your own unsanctioned prison.”

“You wrote a guide to running an off the books blacksite for housing criminals?” Cowboy Rockstar arched an immaculate eyebrow. “That’s not really a very superheroic activity.”

“Huh. When you put it like that it’s really no wonder that the only person who seems to have implemented any of it is a supervillain who seems to have taken over the world.”

“He had help,” I heard somebody grumble from Cowboy Rockstar’s other side.

Helm Lady was one of the only Hatman proteges to both survive to adulthood and continue her career as a superhero, so it was hardly surprising that she’d been able to sneak up on us.

“Helm Lady, good of you to join us!” Cowboy Rockstar said. “Zach over here was just telling me about how he designed this prison to be unescapable! Isn’t that exciting.”

“Hardly,” Helm Lady said glumly.

“I gotta agree with her on this one,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? You’ve been given a rare opportunity to outdo yourself in a grandiose and practical way! You’ve been here longer than anybody. It seems like Smuggles has some kind of vendetta against you specifically, and so he’s used your own tactics against you! Now, with our help of course, you can show everybody that you’re smarter than you!” Cowboy Rockstar was gesticulating wildly at this point drawing a sharp and reproachful glare from warden Giorgio.

“Hm,” I said, I had already written a guide to escapology. Maybe I’d already unwittingly outwitted myself. Besides, Smuggles’s prison wasn’t actually an exact copy of the one I’d designed on the blog. He’d had to make some changes to prevent it from having any real rehabilitative value. Dressing the prisoners like villains instead of heroes for instance. And villain costumes are very different from hero costumes. They’re like eighty percent sharp edges. I looked Cowboy Rockstar up and down. The costume they had him in had spikes up and down his arms. Maybe we could use them to pick the locks on our cell? We’d still have to deal with the robot guards and who knows what else. But maybe that was a place to start.

“Ok,” I said after a moment. “I’m sure we can come up with something, after all, as I say

on my blog, when you’re in a locked room, anything can be a key.”

Cowboy Rockstar grinned and gestured around the room at the assorted superheroes that were locked in with us, “And we’ve certainly got an eclectic bunch of keys here haven’t we.”

I smiled and looked around the room, maybe this could actually work.

***

“If I had an iPod and a busted time machine we could do this in a snappy montage and be out in no time,” I grumbled to Cowboy Rockstar.

It was the next day, and our recreation activity was something called “evil baseball.” There’s no batters, no outfield, and the only umpire was a deranged mime. The only real resemblance it had to regular “non-evil” baseball, was the fact that there were four bases, and players could steal bases. In fact, the game was pretty much just stealing bases. Because stealing is a crime get it? Ugh, the sooner we got out of there and stopped Smuggles the better. Cowboy Rockstar was manning first base for his team, and I’d just stolen first. I suspected it was because Helm Lady, the “pitcher” for Cowboy Rockstar’s team, had allowed me to get to first so we could chat. It might have been because I’m really athletic though. It’s hard to say.

“I don’t think that’s how anything works,” Cowboy Rockstar said.

“Oh what do you know?”

“A lot, I’ve unknotted several time paradoxes you know. Some experts even say that I ‘invented’ the current iteration of this timeline.”

“Ah, so this is all your fault.”

“Nice try, I didn’t give Smuggles access to an interdimensional warp gate so he could free his fish whispering friend from his prison.”

“Touche.”

“What have you got?”

“I was thinking, we know that Smuggles has everybody’s powers neutralized inside this prison right?”

“Yes.”

“Well not every hero has powers to begin with,” I started. “And there are few people here with relevant talents that Smuggles can’t turn off.”

“Talents such as?”

Giorgio blew his whistle. Apparently I’d spent too long dawdling at first base without even trying to steal second.

“I guess whistling doesn’t go against the mime code of silence,” I grumbled as I started to edge off of first base.

“Talents such as?” Cowboy Rockstar repeated before I took off.

I nodded towards his team’s second baseman.

“Being a giant rock monster with seven hands,” I said before racing off toward Rockblock.

***

The next night I laid awake, staring up at the ceiling of my cell, going over what was slowly starting to look like a plan again and again. If Cowboy Rockstar could use the many razor sharp spikes on his villain costume to pick the locks on his cell, — and he’d assured me that he could, upside down, in his sleep — and then get to the others, Rockblock could probably serve as our muscle until we got out and the other heroes got their powers back. He’d need to fight off dozens of battle drones though. No, that wasn’t much of a plan. Muscle was great, but we’d need some other way to guarantee the drones would stay off of us until we got outside. I consulted the scrap of paper I had hidden in the palm of my hand, directed away from any prying eyes or cameras. The scrap had been discretely slipped into the pocket of my hoodie by Helm Lady. She’d managed to steal a pencil during Evil Mad Libs, and had taken the liberty of jotting down everybody who we knew was imprisoned here. “Our list of keys,” as Cowboy Rockstar had called it. We needed to keep the circle of people who knew that we were planning a breakout small for now. That way there’d be less of a chance of any villains or drones getting wind of it. So Cowboy Rockstar wanted me to identify anybody who might be especially useful in the actual breakout, whereupon we’d obviously free the rest of the prisoners. I consulted the list again, mentally sorting the manifest into those who had powers, and thus were less likely to be especially useful without the use of them, and those who didn’t have powers, and therefore were pretty much operating at 100% effectiveness. There’s another thing I didn’t account for in my own designs, sucks to be you Smuggles. That’s what happens when you build your top secret superhero prison based on the musings of a comedy blog instead of doing your own work you frikkin goon. I circled a couple of names on my illicit scrap of paper and was just about ready to smugly smile myself to sleep when I noticed a faint buzzing. My first thought was wall bees. You wouldn’t believe how often strange buzzing sounds in the How To Hero office ended up being bees in the wall. But this buzzing was more mechanical and well, I guess it must have been there since I was first thrown into this dump. I had managed to sublimate it into the background noise of my time here but now in the dead of the night I was able to really listen to it finally. I tentatively got off of my threadbare cot and walked the length of my small cell. The buzzing was, as I’d feared, strongest by the door. Which could only mean one thing. Door bees! No, I’m kidding, it meant that the old fashioned deadbolt lock was either just for show, or just one part of the cell doors’ security systems. There was some kind of electronic component as well. One that probably wouldn’t be able to be thwarted with some evil-looking spikes. I looked at my scrap once more, I’d have to have a conversation with one of the other prisoners tomorrow.

***

“Professor Flay,” I whispered as I took a seat next to a glasses-wearing black man decked out in a purple jumpsuit with a skull belt buckle.

“Yes?” the man said, clearly startled, “I’m sorry I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“My name’s Zach, and I’m a fan of your Big Book of Fake Science.”

“Um, are you referring to my Complete Compendium of Improbable Science,” Professor Lucius Flay replied.

“Shoot, is that what it’s called? I knew it was something like that, only my buddy lost the cover and title page in a bet with a supervillain we knew who needed them to power his cover and title page powered doomsday device,” I explained quickly.

Professor Flay flared his nostrils, “And you have the nerve to insinuate that my science is fake. Is there a point to this, I don’t want to miss this performance.”

Our villainous rehabilitation activity for the day was “evil karaoke” only songs with the word “bad” in the title were allowed to be performed. Cowboy Rockstar was currently belting out an honestly breathtaking rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. It was an especially loud and especially drawn out version of the song, so that Professor Flay and I could converse in relative peace.

“What kind of scientist would you say you are Professor?”

“If you must know, I consider myself to be more or less omnidisciplinary,” Professor Flay said.

“That means you dabble in a little bit of everything right?”

“Everything scientific.”

“And that’s not a superpower thing right? You came by all that knowledge on your own?”

Professor Flay waved a dismissive hand at me, “Of course I did. I studied for years to get to where I am today. Sure I may have had to break a few time travel regulations to do it, but otherwise, I come by my intellect fair and square.”

“Excellent!” I shouted a little too loudly. “This is the best version of ‘Bad Romance’ I’ve ever heard!” I quickly added, to cover myself.

“Yeah it’s so good that they should call it ‘Good Romance!’” Rockblock shouted, no doubt trying to help me out.

Unfortunately though, that was the wrong thing to say. Giorgio the Mime certainly couldn’t allow anything gooditalics to happen in this evil facility, so he quickly put the kibosh on Cowboy Rockstar’s performance, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the room. I thought I even saw a drone flash a frowny face. The drones then started ferrying us out of the room and back to our individual cells.

“How much do you know about electronic locks?” I quickly asked as I pressed my scrap of paper in between Professor Flay’s belt and jumpsuit.

Realization flashed across Professor Flay’s face.

“Ah,” he said. “Enough.”

I hoped he was right.

***

The next day our recreational activity was evil baking. There were several different stations set up in the auditorium, each with ingredients set up to make different evil foods. I ambled past “exploding pies”, “sentient food that will actively beg for its life as you eat it”, and “kale cookies” before taking a seat next to Cowboy Rockstar at the “general poisons” table. Helm Lady and Rockblock were already there, and I noticed Helm Lady was taking special care not to touch any of the ingredients on the table. Rockblock, being made entirely out of stone and cando spirit, began handling the various herbs and toxins and following the recipe. I guess they’d decided that somebody at our table had to be doing something to avoid attracting any unwanted attention.

“Where’s Professor Flay?” I asked.

“He just walked in,” Cowboy Rockstar said, nodding toward the door, where a contingent of drones were herding in another batch of prisoners.

“Over here!” Rockblock bellowed, waving three of his giant hands while the other four mixed and mashed various ingredients.

“Quiet,” Helm Lady snarled. I was beginning to regret bringing Rockblock in on our plans so early.

Still, Professor Flay managed to get the message and made his way over to our table.

“Hello everybody,” he said as he sat down next to Helm Lady. He wrinkled his nose as he caught a whiff of what Rockblock was mixing in his bowl. “What are we making?”

“Sulfide sausages,” Rockblock replied.

“Lovely.”

“So?” I asked, raising my eyebrow inquisitively at the professor.

Professor Flay glanced around and, confident that there were no drones within listening distance, leaned in conspiratorially.

“I can build the device you described but-”

“Hey guys, sorry I didn’t come right away. I wanted to do a lap to see if there were any other cooler tables,” a pale skinned man clad in black chainmail and sporting thick rimmed glasses said as he sat down at our table.

“Er… what?” I asked.

“I know Rockblock called me over, but I’m not just going to sit down at the first table that offers me a spot, am I?” the other man replied as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Uh, I was actually talking to Professor Flay,” Rockblock said.

The bespectacled man laughed, “Oh Rockblock, I’d heard your sense of humor was legendary.”

Rockblock looked confused but Helm Lady put a hand on one of his arms.

“What do you want Glassesman?”

“Helm Lady! Great to see you. How’s the old man?”

“We don’t talk.”

“Oh, is that right? Poor Hats never could keep a protege.”

“Glassesman.” I said, interjecting before things escalated. “You weren’t on the list. When did you get here?”

“Oh, just recently. I wasn’t captured with the rest of you in the first wave.”

Cowboy Rockstar ignored the jab and leaned forward. “Are you saying that Smuggles has found whatever resistance there is? Where’s Ultiman?”

“Keep your ten-gallon hat on buckaroo, the resistance is fine such as it is. I was deep undercover in Smuggles’ operation, but I got found out.”

“No surprise there. You probably started handing out promotional sunglasses to all the villains as soon as you got in there,” Helm Lady muttered.

“Hey, supervillains are a market I have yet to break into. This was a rare networking opportunity for me!”

What a tool.

“Enough,” Cowboy Rockstar said, making sure to keep his voice even.

“What’s with all the hushed tones,” Glassesman said, looking us all up and down.

“Ah,” he said when he’d completed his appraisal. “You’re planning a break out.”

“No we’re n-” Helm Lady started but Glassesman held up his hand.

“Oh please, you’ve got a scientist, a jack-of-all-trades, a bruiser, a non-powered combatant and a…” he faltered when he got to me.

“Blogger,” I said curtly.

Glassesman raised an eyebrow but kept going, “So don’t try to keep me out of this, I’m non-powered too, and I can fight better than a Hatb- sorry exitalics-Hatboy any day of the week.”

Cowboy Rockstar looked as though he was going to say something to get rid of Glassesman but he just sighed and gestured to Professor Flay.

“Fine, sure. Professor you were saying?”

“Um, well, yes. I can build the… device, you asked for but I can’t do it from thin air. I need something to work from.”

We all sat in silence for a moment. I guess it was too much to ask for an omni-disciplinaryitalics super-scientist to be able to whip up an EMP device out of whatever he could find in his prison cell. I’d be sure to inform whatever board certifies omni-disciplinary scientists to amend an asterisk to Professor Flay’s credentials when we got out of here.

“Could you build it out of whatever those things are made of?” Glassesman said, jerking a thumb towards one of the drones.

Professor Flay appraised it, “It appears to run on a lithioplasmic core with a carbon-electrum chassis. Assuming there’s a terrakon multispacial chip rattling around in or near its processor… Yes, I wouldn’t even need too much of it. Just a chunk from the chest if I had to guess.”

“Excellent,” Glassesman said before he stood up and flipped over our table. “And you can tell that cap clad crank that I’m twice the hero he ever was!”

Helm Lady smirked and wordlessly lunged at him, wrapping her long fingers around his neck. Professor Flay and I quickly took cover behind the table. Flay because he was a nerd and wasn’t about to get involved in a fist fight between two highly trained combatants. And me to protect Flay naturally. We needed him fit enough to build us the EMP, I couldn’t exactly leave him. Cowboy Rockstar jumped on Glassesman’s back and tried to pull him away while Rockblock scrambled to gather up the ingredients from his poison. A stray pellet of congealed arsenic bounced over to me and I scooped it up into my hoodie. You never know, right?

In a minute several drones were trundling over to our little group trying to break up the fight. They’d just about managed to pry Cowboy Rockstar, Glassesman and Helm Lady apart when Rockblock let out a deafening roar and joined the fray, sending a handful of drones flying as he growled something incoherent about how hard he’d been working on perfecting his recipe. By this time the other assembled heroes were all looking toward us, but before anybody else could get any ideas about joining the riot, more drones than I’d even realized were in the prison poured into the auditorium and surrounded my friends. Finally managing to pull them apart.

The rest of the heroes, myself and Professor Flay included, were now being rounded up by some of the drones while most of them were being engaged by six of Rockblock’s giant fists. As we walked by though, I noticed his seventh appendage experly flick a chunk of metal in our direction. I stumbled slightly, bending over quickly to grab the robot chunk. And then discretely passed it to Professor Flay before we were split off to return to our own cells.

“I’ll have it done before tonight,” he said to me as he palmed the misshapen blob of metal and wiring.

I nodded and smiled, by that time tomorrow we’d be out of that forsaken prison and saving the world.

***

Night fell, and I paced anxiously around the length of my cell. Assuming Professor Flay was able to work as quickly as he claimed he was able to. And assuming Rockblock had gotten him exactly what he needed. And assuming Cowboy Rockstar and Glassesman and Helm Lady were able to pick the locks on their cells when the time came. And assuming Rockblock could keep any guards off of us. And assuming- Well, there were a lot of assumptions before I’d be tasting fresh air. Our plan was hardly fool proof, and we had at least two or three fools on our team, depending on who you asked. We were making a few too many assumptions for my liking. But it was the best we had, so I guess that was that. There was nothing I could do except wait for something to happen.

And when something happened, everything happened.

First there was a deafening boom, followed by a shockwave that traveled quickly throughout the cell block. If I hadn’t been deafened by the explosion, I would have noticed that the electronic buzzing I’d heard had gone silent. Professor Flay’s homebrewed EMP had worked. I ran to the door and saw several guard drones collapsed on the ground. Their cybernetic features were blank.

Seconds later three cell doors swung open and Cowboy Rockstar, Helm Lady, and Glassesman strode out. Glassesman looked especially smug, even though he was the last one out. The other two were such pros, they decided to let it slide. They quickly started working on picking the locks on the other cells. Helm Lady sprung Rockblock first, just in case there were any drones outside the EMP’s radius that might’ve been trundling our way. Professor Flay’s EMP was a one-shot kind of deal so we’d have to fight or evade any other drones we encountered.

“So far so good eh?” Cowboy Rockstar grinned as he unlocked the door to my cell.

“So far, yeah,” I said anxiously. “We’re pretty much flying blind from here on out th- Woah!”

I took a step back into my cell as Cowboy Rockstar became enveloped in a brilliant white light. I stood agape as he began hovering a few inches off the ground and the light faded into his body.

“What was that?” I asked.

Cowboy Rockstar landed adroitly on the ground and checked his pulse with two of his fingers.

“It’s… I think the EMP must have shorted out whatever device was neutralizing our powers in here,” Cowboy Rockstar said. His fists began crackling with energy.

I looked up and down the hall of cells. Powerful glows or crumpled cell doors told me that many of the other heroes were starting to regain access to their powers.

“Well that certainly changes the game,” I said as I began taking stock of all of the new keys we’d just acquired.

***

We quickly divided into a few teams:

Team One: Nightron, Foresight P. Jones, and Intangi-Bill. None of us had been outside since we’d arrived in the prison and so none of us actually knew where the exit was. Team one would use their respective speed, supervision and intangibility in concert to find a way out.

Team Two: Cowboy Rockstar, Rockblock, and Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons. Our heavy hitters. If anybody could break straight through the walls that surrounded us to the outside it was them.

Team Three: Professor Flay, Electrobug, Digitalized, Psionica. They set about trying to cobble together weapons and gear from the broken husks of the drones that we had at our disposal.

Team Four: Captain Patriot, Brad the Radioactive Man, Amphin, Glassesman, Helm Lady and the Human Wall. The best offense is a strong defense, and if any of our other teams were going to have any hope of doing what they needed to do, they’d need somebody keeping Giorgio and whatever drones he could scrounge together off of their backs.

Team Five: Dr. Hemer, Knife Knurse, and Super Surgeon. A lot of heroes were suffering painful side-effects either from the sudden reemergence of their superpowers or the power-deprivation they’d been suffering since they’d gotten here. Anybody who had any sort of medical knowledge would tend to them until we get help on the outside.

Team Six: Just me. My job was to come up with the team names and I’m not ashamed to admit that I totally phoned it in.

I was sitting back and taking stock of the other teams’ progress when a gust of wind informed me of Nightron’s return.

“We’re not the only prisoners here,” he said panting, parts of his supervillain costume were singed, he must have encountered other guards elsewhere in the facility.

“You’re sure?” I asked frantically. I’m not sure why it had never occurred to me that there might be other prisoners somewhere in this facility. But I had only ever seen the heroes that were in that corridor at communal recreational events.

“Positive, there are maybe five or six other cell blocks just like this one. They’ve got dozens of other superheroes here. But that’s not all. World leaders, para-folk, some civilians. I think I even saw some sort of zoo,” Nightron said.

“Probably for animal sidekicks and the like,” I mused aloud. “Were you followed back here?”

“No, but they saw who I was. I’m sure they know where I’m supposed to be. It won’t be long before we have company here.”

“You’re right. Professor, how are those weapons coming!” I shouted towards where Team Three was working.

“My EMP seems to have worked a little too well, there’s no resteoring powers to these machines, but Psionica has managed to use her telekinetic abilities to reform some chunks of metal into clubs.”

“That’ll have to do,” I said. “Nightron, grab a few of those clubs, if anybody comes you’ll join Team Four. Hit them hard and hit them fast.”

“But what about the other prisoners?” Nightron protested.

“We need to break ourselves out before we can worry about anybody else,” Glassesman said.

“I hate to admit it but he’s right,” Helm Lady agreed.

“Yeah but-” and then, in a whoosh he was gone, because it was at that moment that a platoon of drones filed into our hallway. Two of them hit the ground, their CPUs bashed in by Nightron, before the rest of us even registered what was happening but once we did, the rest of Team Four, sprung into action.

“Zach, over here,” Professor Flay called.

I ran over to him, he passed me a makeshift club and we formed a defensive ring around our medics and the wounded along with the rest of Team Three.

“We are through!” Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons cried.

We helped Team Five get to the large gap in the wall that Team Two had formed as Rockblock and Cowboy Rockstar went to join the fray in the corridor.

“We may have problem,” Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons muttered to us as we joined her outside.

Problem was an understatement. For one thing, the sky was a murky blend of purples, oranges, and reds, and I know I haven’t been doing a ton of “world-building” in this dramatic account of my escape from a supervillain run supermax, but the sky we were all used to seeing was definitely blue. The ground we were standing on was somehow both dusty and crumbly. Every step we took sent a cloud of dust and ground flakes into the air. And we couldn’t see any other signs of life or civilization anywhere at all. I had always assumed that we would be somewhere inconspicuous but local, so that Smuggles could keep an eye on us, but it appeared as though we were in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting to the middle of anywhere.

“What… What is this place?” Professor Flay said.

“Beats me,” I said with a shrug. When I designed this prison for How To Hero I recommended finding a large unused building with reinforced walls that was situated in a place that no cops would ever be caught dead anywhere near. There are literally four or five places like that within a twenty block radius of How To Hero headquarters so where the hell were we. Unless… crap.

“Atomspace,” I said. “We’ve been shrunken down and sent to a prison in Atomspace.”

“Well,” Professor Flay said, taking in our otherworldly surroundings. “That creates a wrinkle in our plans doesn’t it.”

“It certainly does,” I agreed.

And that’s when everything went black.

***

I awoke, chained to a chair, in what may very well have been the most garishly decorated room I had ever seen. And Parenthetical Guy once painted our office neon green and creamsicle orange so that was saying something. The walls were all a deep blood red and there were various supervillainous accoutrements mounted all over the walls. Scary looking masks, futuristic blasters, esoteric looking staffs. A giant serpent’s head wearing oversized sunglasses was mounted on the wall directly opposite me. Below the serpent head sat an ornate, obsidian desk with a high backed leather chair behind it. The carpet was the color of rotting bones, which made a lot of sense when I realized that it wasn’t really a carpet at all, but rather a mat made entirely of very thin bone fragments. Bone fragments that were incredibly sharp at the ends.

“Ouch!” I yelped as I lifted my feet slightly off of the ground.

“Well look who’s finally awake,” a snide voice to my left said.

I turned my head and my heart dropped. Joining me in this chilling chamber were the rest of my friends: Cowboy Rockstar, Helm Lady, Professor Flay and Glassesman were chained to chairs like mine while Rockblock’s hulking form was chained to the wall on the far side of the room. The humans in the chairs also had their feet up in various positions. Rockblock was stuck standing on the bone floor, but at least he didn’t seem to mind.

“What happened?” I asked groggily.

“We were all knocked unconscious after we broke through the prison walls,” Professor Flay explained. “Cerebral implants I’d guess.”

“You’re saying we were all chipped?” I said, bewildered. “That’s crazy. Why weren’t we all knocked out as soon as we broke out of our cells?”

“Because I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized you were in Atomspace.”

All of our heads snapped towards the door where a man wearing a dark gray catsuit, a bright orange domino mask, and heavy metal boots strode into the room. “Do you like how I’ve decorated? Greg the Skeleton King referred me to his interior design guy.”

“That explains the bones,” Helm Lady muttered.

“And the hellfire!” Cowboy Rockstar proclaimed. “From right before we were captured, I’d been wondering about that.”

“Smuggles,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Zachary,” he said curtly. “Mr. How To Hero himself, how does it feel to be so utterly defeated by someone you’ve spent years ridiculing on your infantile blog?”

“I’ll let you know when it happens,” I said.

“Always with the clever little jokes,” Smuggles said as he took a seat in the leather chair and steepled his fingers. “You have been utterly defeated though. I’ve been following your little escape attempt from the very beginning. My people are not idiots you know. We’ve been listening to every conversation, watching your every move. The riot in the cafeteria was especially amusing.” He nodded at Rockblock who just grunted in response. “Quite frankly, you got further than I expected you to. But I’m glad you did, because now you have to admit that I’ve completely bested you. You’ve been thoroughly trounced Zachary. Who’s the laughingstock now?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to think of a way out of this for myself and my friends, when Glassesman burst out laughing. Smuggles’s eye flashed with rage and he slammed a hand down on his desk.

“I’m sorry, is something amusing here?”

“No no… Well yeah, sorry, it’s just… You got every supervillain to band together, captured most of the superheroes, and basically took over the entire world just to get back at some low rate blogger?”

“Hey, uncalled for!” I shouted.

“I’m sorry it’s just a bit ridiculous don’t you think?”

“Honestly, I kind of agree with him,” Helm Lady said sheepishly.

“I legitimately thought this whole thing was about me,” Cowboy Rockstar admitted. “I’m kind of a big deal you know, being a semigod and all that.”

“Don’t you mean demigod?” Professor Flay asked, doing a little wiggle shake to get his chair facing Cowboy Rockstar.

“Oh, I’m that too. But I’m talking about the cult I inadvertently inspired that has deified me,” Cowboy Rockstar explained.

Smuggles banged his fist down on his desk again.

“Enough!” he shouted, before cradling his fist in his other hand. “Now that your merry band has been epically thwarted and humiliated, I must decide on your punishment. I’m not about to risk you lot plotting another breakout.”

My mind started racing for a way out. This was the first time I had come face to face with Smuggles since he’d unleashed Chuck the Fish Whisperer in the How To Hero basement. Until now I hadn’t realized just how much of what was happening revolved around me. I didn’t even realize Smuggles had been familiar with my blog before we hired him. Maybe I could work with that.

“Do your worst Smuggles. I guarantee you it won’t be anything worse than what actual villains have done to me,” I said, affixing my most smug expression on my features.

“What are you talking about?” Smuggles said, clearly thrown.

“I mean come on. I lived with a real supervillain before. Remember Dr. Brainwave?”

“Wait, what?” Helm Lady said. “You lived with Dr. Brainwave? We’ve been looking for him for years!”

“Yeah well I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.

“Brainwave was a sentimental hack. Killing him was child’s play.” Smuggles said through mounting anger.

I faltered for a moment. So Smuggles had been the one who had mailed that bomb to our office? He was the reason Dr. Brainwave was dead? Sure the guy was a supervillain, but at the end of the day he had been my… my friend. And he’d sacrificed his life to save mine and my friends’. The fact that I was sitting less than three feet away from his murderer was almost too much to bear. Still, there’d be plenty of time to deal with him later. Assuming my plan worked.

“Still before you killed him he made my life miserable. You’ve read my blog, I’m sure you know all about it. So I honestly doubt that anything you plan to do can compare.”

Smuggles literally shook with rage, “I can… I can killitalics you! You ever think about that?”

Cowboy Rockstar grinned, “Good luck with that.”

Ok, honestly I’m not sure what thatitalics was about. Is Cowboy Rockstar immortal? Has anybody ever checked that? Regardless, I decided to just roll with it.

“Do your worst.” I said.

“Guys!” Glassesman shouted exasperated. “I love taunting a bad guy as much as the next guy, but maybe we should all ease up a bit!”

“Oh relax,” I said. “Smuggles is a Z-lister trying to kick it with the big kids. He can’t just shoot us or something. If he wants to be a world-dominating evil monster he’s going to have to come up with a suitably ostentatious way to kill us and honestly, he doesn’t have the imagination. Just look at his face, this is clearly eating at him.”

It was as though a lightbulb went off over Smuggles’s head. His face warped from grimace to grin and he strode around to the other side of his desk.

“I’ve already succeeded in taking over the world and routing your beloved superheroes. I hardly need to prove myself to the likes of you. You can expect to be executed in a ‘suitable ostentatious manner’ shortly.”

I was all read to shoot back a witty retort when everything went black again.

***

I awoke to the sound of cheering, which made me feel pretty good. I don’t often get cheered for waking up. I’m sure Cowboy Rockstar was feeling pretty regular though, people cheer for everything that guy does. I was in the center of a gladiatorial arena, the stands were packed with guard drones and more than a few supervillains. The presence of so many of them here sent a shiver down my spine. Had Smuggles really been able to recruit and control so many supervillains? Next to me, my friends laid in a rumpled heap, all of them still unconscious with the exception of…

“Now look what you’ve done,” Professor Flay said sternly.

I turned to look at him and saw the abject fear sketched across his features.

“Relax Prof, everything’s going to be ok.”

“How can you say that! Look at us! We’re in an arena surrounded by bloodthirsty supervillains for god’s sake!”

“It’s not the supervillains you should be worrying about, it’s whatever’s going to come out of that gate,” I said, pointing to a massive (well, massive relative to our shrunken selves) gate directly opposite us.

Professor Flay shuddered, “I imagine the others are still unconscious to prevent them from being able to do anything against whatever that might be.”

I nodded, “It makes sense, Smuggles doesn’t want to risk anything going wrong.”

“But I still want the satisfaction of watching at least some of you soil yourselves in fear,” Smuggles said as his smug visage appeared on a floating jumbotron that was hovering over the arena.

“You’ll never get away with this you knave!” Professor Flay shouted.

“Oh Professor, I already have. I think I’ll make today an international holiday going forward,” Smuggles said as he leaned back from the camera so we could see his entire upper body on the screen. He was sitting on a golden throne and his fingers were hovering above a big red button. I assumed whatever was waiting behind the gate would be released at the press of that button. And why prolong the inevitable.

“Why don’t you come down here so I can wipe that smug expression off of your face, you absolute goober!” I called up to Smuggles.

Smuggles frowned, “Goodbye Zach, you will not be missed.”

His finger pressed the button. The gate started to ascend. Professor Flay sighed and rolled up his sleeves. I had to admire him, he wasn’t planning on going down without some sort of fight. As the gate rose the cheers of the crowd grew even more fevered. I think I even saw a sign that said “Cowboy Suckstar.” Rude. After what seemed like an eternity the gate was finally fully open and a ferocious roar shook the stadium as a massive beast lumbered into the arena. The ginormous monster truly had it all. Dozens of eyes, face tentacles, spikes, a flaming tail. I had to admit this would certainly be a suitably ostentatious way to die. Of course, I wasn’t about to let Smuggles get his way was I?

“Good god what is that thing?” Professor Flay said as he backed away from the giant monster.

“It’s our way out,” I said calmly as I climbed on top of Rockblock’s comatose body, put two fingers in my mouth and whistled sharply.

“What are you doing?” Professor Flay shouted at me as the monster began galloping towards us on all fours.

I looked down at Professor Flay and smiled, “See you on the other side Prof.”

And then the monster ate me.

2 notes · View notes

yourdeepestfathoms · 4 years

Text

in aeternum, little lamb

(Read Anne as Courtney!Anne)

Word count: 4756

Prompt: “Look, I know we don’t know each other that well, but I’m still worried about you. No one deserves to be alone.”

———————

It was raining. Again.

Usually a rainstorm was serene and peaceful, normal for London, but there was a certain sticky humidity in the air that made going outside a chore. It was cold, yet uncomfortably warm at the same time with no wind blowing to ease the mild heat that has settled its oppressive, sultry murk over the city. It spilled into every street, every alleyway, every house that dared to open the window, thinking that it would help with the clamminess that fogged their home, but to no avail.

This, of course, brought upon complete and utter dreariness that coated every person making their rounds through their daily lives.

Anne’s forehead was dotted with beads of sweat by the time she arrived at the theater, only then really regretting her decision to walk to work. She hadn’t been expecting the humidity to be that bad, but here she was, feeling like she was leaking steam from every pore.

“God, this weather is miserable,” Jane was grumbling in her dressing room when Anne peeked in. She was currently attempting to tame her wild blonde hair (and losing the battle), which had a small (read as: large, high, anything but small) tendency to frizz up in high vaporous atmospheres like the one drenching London on that day.

“You look great, Jane.” Anne laughed, leaning on the doorframe. She gets a piercing grey glower shot in her direction, but isn’t phased by it. The coldness of the stare almost eased her internal temperature.

“Why is it so damn humid?” Jane finally exclaimed. “We live in London! Not Florida or whatever the fuck it’s called—”

Anne bit both lips, trying to hold back her laughter at the proper fit the queen before her was throwing.

“It’s supposed to be rainy and cold. Not rainy and a LITERAL SAUNA!”

Kitty, who was sitting nearby at her own makeup table, giggled softly. She got up and picked up a brush to help with her mother’s wild hair, which was definitely puffing up as if she were an angry cat or a distressed Studio Ghibli character.

“I don’t know, Jane,” Anne laughed slightly. “Well, I’m going to go get a cup of coffee. You two need anything?”

“Yeah,” Jane said. “A word with Mother Nature.”

Anne laughed again, waved a hand, and walked off to the break room.

Well- it wasn’t really a break room, per se. Theaters didn’t really have those. It was just an extra dressing room that nobody used and had a microwave, mini fridge, and coffee machine inside. In some way or another, a round bar table, small couch, and two beanbags ended up inside- Anne couldn’t really remember how they got there, but they were there and, thus, the room became a nice place to chat and relax when nothing was going on. Kitty had once even hid under the twin beanbags during a game of hide-and-seek (which was also her idea).

Upon stepping inside the break room, the scent of coffee bombarded Anne’s nose. The coffee machine was still on, but little was left in the pot. She walks over to it, thinking it was enough to sate her- she didn’t really like coffee, but she needed the extra rush to help her combat the dreariness the weather was inflicting upon her.

“Sorry,” A voice from behind suddenly said. “If I had known you wanted some, I would have made more.”

Anne actually jumped and she whirled around to see none other than the music director sitting in one of the beanbags. She jumped, too, and straightened up, nearly spilling the mug she had placed beside her pillowy seat.

“Sorry!” She said again. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Anne placed a hand over her racing heart and waved the other dismissively, laughing.

“It’s alright!” She assured the girl. “I didn’t see you at all!”

Joan smiled slightly, humoring her comment, then slumped back over to continue reading the book she had in her lap.

Anne studies her for a moment- as everyone said, Joan wasn’t much for conversation, despite always lurking on the edges of a group discussion. It was like she wanted to join in or just talk to someone, but didn’t have the courage to do so. Perhaps she was worried about being ignored or rejected, so, instead, she just watched in silence.

Maybe that’s why a few younger stagehands who were working there for college credit started calling her the “Theater Ghost.” Anne couldn’t really deny that that title wasn’t accurate- her not noticing the girl at all just proved that it was.

“Did you drink all of this?” She asked, trying to strike up a conversation to make things less awkward. Tenseness was as thick as the humidity outside in that room.

“It’s not that big of a pot...” Joan sort of mumbled.

So, yes. She did.

Anne frowned slightly. She vaguely knew of Joan’s caffeine addiction, but never really saw it first hand. She just knew that the girl drank more coffee than everyone working on the show combined.

“I see,” Anne chuckled. “Well, alright.”

She turned around while waiting for the pot to fill to see that Joan was looking at her. However, when she noticed, Joan snapped her head back down to her book. Anne furrowed her eyebrows.

“What are you reading?”

“Huh?” Joan seemed...surprised that Anne was asking her something. “Oh, it’s just- it’s just some silly book.” She kicked her leg anxiously against the beanbag, seemingly trying to hype herself up for something. “It’s, umm- it’s called Wings of Fire.”

She brandishes the book, keeping one finger inside the pages to mark her spot. On the cover was a flying gold and black dragon with four insect wings, spines along the back, and funny little glasses on the snout (something about dragons having eyesight care and possibly dragon eye doctors stood out as silly to Anne).

“It looks good,” Anne said after inspecting the picture.

“Oh, it is!” Joan said, perking up slightly. “It’s about these ten dragon tribes and five baby dragons were supposed to be born on The Brightest Night and be the Dragonets of Destiny to stop the war between three Sandwings fighting to be queen. So they’re kept underground, but their caretakers are kinda abusive and mean. Probably because the Skywing egg was destroyed so they had to replace it with a Rainwing egg, which are supposed to be the laziest tribe and that makes Kestrel- the really mean guardian- mad. So she’s kinda a jerk to the five dragonets. But then they break out of their cave before they’re supposed to leave when they’re six, because they have to wait until they’re seven, only to be captured by the Skywing queen! And they’re forced to fight to the death and they’re almost killed because this one character, Peril, can burn everything she touches! But then it’s revealed that Clay, he’s the Mudwing, has fireproof scales! And Glory, she’s the Rainwing I was talking about, can spit venom!! Then they escape and go to the Seawing kingdom and Tsunami- the Seawing- is actually the missing Seawing princess and a statue was killing all the other eggs. Then they go to the rainforest and Glory becomes queen and Starflight goes blind in the fourth book and the end of the war happens in the fifth!!” She’s babbling about a hundred miles per minute- Anne can barely keep up. “We should- we should read it together! If you’re interested. Like a book club! Except I’m on the twelfth book right now and I don’t know how fast you can read and I just basically spoiled the entire series, hahaha...but only for the first five!! But the next arc isn’t that good if you ask me. It completely throws everything that has happened out the window and just puts new characters in a school? Which they barely even stay at! So why even make the school, Tui? And my favorite character in that segment is in a coma for, like, three of the five books in that arc!! Arc three is pretty cool, though. I like the new tribes. And Sundew is supposed to be a lesbian! With an actual girlfriend! And it’s a main plot point!!” She’s beaming now. “I just—I think you would really, really like it and, I dunno...it would be fun! I can read it aloud? N-not because I think you can’t read or anything, I just—like talking. To someone. And to make sure you don’t doze off and miss any of the really good parts! Because there are SO MANY even though Tui doesn’t seem to remember any of her world building half of the time, but—”

“Joan?”

“Yeah?”

“Breathe.”

Joan’s face flashed deep crimson. She hunched her shoulders around her neck and ducked her head, almost using her book as a shield to hide herself. It seems she just realized that she had been talking the green queen’s ear off.

“Sorry,” She whispered. “I-I just thought that you wanted to...” She shook her head. Her hands clench around the sides of her book. “Nevermind.”

“Joan-”

“Your coffee is gonna get cold.”

Anne looked at the full coffee pot, then back to the girl, and then walked over to get herself a cup. She can hear Joan shifting anxiously in the beanbag behind her.

Honestly, she found the girl’s deep interest in what she was reading quite endearing, she just didn’t know how to reply to her monologue in a way that showed that she actually was interested in what she was saying.

“Maybe send me the link to the book sometime?” Anne offered while heading for the door. “Or if you have a physical copy...”

“Yeah,” Joan smiles thinly- weakly. “I have some at home. I’ll give them to you tomorrow.”

“Sounds great.”

“Oh, and— Anne?”

Anne stopped right as she was walking out.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

Joan looked down shyly, shifting her legs.

“For talking to me.”

———

“She thanked me. For standing there while she was ranting about a book!”

The other queens looked rather amused by the story they were given during dinner. It wasn’t exactly the reactions Anne was hoping for- was nobody else concerned by the oddity of the situation?!

“Joan’s a...quirky kid.” Jane merely said. “She’s always been a little strange, Anne. I’m almost positive she was raised by literal street rats, so that might have something to do with it. Rats aren’t exactly much for conversation.”

Anne looked at her in shock. Of everyone to say such a thing, she hadn’t expected it to come from Jane “Protective and Loving Mom Friend” Seymour.

“Did you just—”

“Anne,” Jane sighed. “You know what I’m talking about. She worked for you! She’s just a weird kid. Kids are weird!”

“‘Weird’ is when a kid likes to watch snails go over salt and get burned, Jane. Thanking someone for listening to them talk about a book is concerning.” Anne argued.

“Cathy does it all the time.”

“Cathy doesn’t thank us!”

Anne was really getting worked up over this and she wasn’t exactly sure why. She really only got this way for Kitty or Maggie- she theorized it was those maternal instincts kicking in or just a natural protectiveness for an ex-maid in waiting.

Whatever it was, it sure seemed to be amusing to the others.

“Okay, calm down, Anne.” Cleves said, laughing slightly. “We get it, you think it’s worrying. No need to start a food fight over it.”

“I’m not going to-” Anne broke off into agitated grumbling, which caused even more giggles in reaction.

“I said thank you to Catherine when I read to her yesterday,” Cathy said.

“That’s because you were asking her opinion on a chapter you wrote!” Anne struck back. “It is NOT the same thing!”

Cathy shrugged and took a bite out of her pork chop.

“It’s nothing you should stress about, Annie.” Kitty said. “Maybe some people are just meant to be alone!”

Anne gave her a look of disbelief.

“Like Henry.” Cleves put in helpfully.

“Like Henry, yeah!”

Now, don’t get Anne wrong, she loved her little found family with the queens very much, but, at that moment, she wanted to hit all of them with the salad bowl at the center of the table as hard as she could.

Maybe not Aragon, though (unfortunately). The woman hadn’t told Anne to forget about the situation or just move on- she was thoughtfully silent, eating her dinner in reserved peace. Whatever her opinion on the argument was, she didn’t say it.

Anne sighed, putting her head in one hand as she picked at her dinner until Aragon finally spoke up to tell her to get her elbow off the table. She begrudgingly obeys.

Like that, the conversation is dropped and something new, something Anne really didn’t care about was talked about.

After dinner, Anne decided to do some snooping on her laptop. First, she looked up historical information on Joan, only to find nothing. Every website was just the same thing over and over again- literally. It was just copied and pasted from the extremely short and vague Wikipedia page on the girl. The names of her parents weren’t even recorded, nor was any childhood information. There was barely even anything on her time as a lady in waiting, which only covered her work under Jane and not either of the cousins.

She had a son named Hercules, though. If that meant anything.

Next, Anne went to Joan’s Instagram page. It had several hundred followers, mainly from the fans who insisted on following everyone associated with the show, and was filled with the normal posts the actors usually had- although there were very few compared to the queen’s and other ladies in waiting’s accounts. Most of the photos were of her work or her playing the songs on her piano or of selfies of her in the band costume.

In almost all of them, she was completely alone.

Anne searched for something- she didn’t know what exactly, just something- in the seventh-five posts on the account, then went to the photos Joan was tagged in. There weren’t many- just group photos and a few good shots of her from a MegaSix and a single appreciation post (she vaguely remembered Joan telling them about it and how giddy it had made her...nobody had really listened to the babbling at the time).

And then Anne found a certain photo- the first one she was ever tagged in: it was a photo of her costume laid out on a table with the caption, “Here’s the lady in waiting costume! I’ll be posting about SIX more on my other account, so follow if you’re interested!”

The name of the account was @force-be-with-ewe.

Anne clicked on it.

force-be-with-ewe

i just really like drawing sheep

Johanna-She/her-Asexual lesbian-Musician and artist

That’s the first thing Anne saw when she clicked on the account, along with an adorable profile picture of a sheep playing a piano, then the whopping twelve followers (most of which were ghosts or bots) and three hundred and nine posts.

It took Anne just a moment to realize that this was Joan’s personal account.

And she went through all of it.

The profile was a mishmash of drawings and piano videos and sheep. The latest post was actually a photo of a bird with a caption talking about how the little guy had been visiting Joan’s bedroom window every morning and “giving her a reason to get up because she had someone looking forward to seeing her.” She maturely and proudly dubbed the bird “Minecraft.”

After that were drawings of dragons with #wingsoffire and #wof in the descriptions, leading Anne to believe that they were characters from the book she had been told about earlier that day.

And they just kept going.

Among videos of Joan playing the theater keyboard when presumably nobody was around, were drawings of sheep playing various instruments and sleeping and being adorable, drawings of more dragons, drawings of a few Pokémon (mainly Snom, Wooloo, and Sobble). There were stunning drawings of giant creatures from a game called “Subnautica” and beautiful drawings of castles and scenery. There were even drawings of the queens!

Usually fans would tag them in art, but it appeared that Joan was too shy to do that. So, instead, she just left them floating in her profile with no ways to see the masterpieces, since there weren’t any hashtags on those.

Anne was genuinely amazed by the attention to detail in the sketches of her and her fellow queens and even more amazed by the drawings with watercolors. She swore the painting’s eyes had more color than her own and the costume was as vibrant as the actual one in real life.

It was beautiful. They were all beautiful.

Why didn’t Joan want anyone seeing these?

Anne kept scrolling and eventually came upon rather...concerning posts.

The first was of a messy, but haunting colored pencil sketch of a pitch black ram with inky, bleeding red eyes that seemed to stare through the screen and directly into Anne’s soul. The caption simply said, “Black Philip.”

Another was a drawing of a blonde girl, presumably Joan, leaking coffee from every single orifice on her face and was drawn with such detail that it would easily make an emetophobic’s stoamch churn with nausea.

And then there were a few of an ice dragon, slightly similar to one of the dragon tribes from the book, but this one notably had more icicle spikes, frayed scales, and jagged wings. It was moon silver in color with ice blue hues and eyes like a raging blizzard.

All the drawings done with this beast, which was apparently named “Killer Frost” (and has no ties to the Flash character of the same name), were normal- just it laying around, flying, standing atop icebergs menacingly or breathing a freezing death breath. But there were a few that stood out to Anne as worrying.

The first was of Kitty, actually. She was wearing her show costume and her eyes were closed with a peaceful expression on her face. And then there was the glittering paw of the ice dragon reaching down from the top of the image and cupping one of her cheeks with its serrated, barbed claws. The caption read, “The Chosen One.”

The second and much more concerning drawing was captioned, “Envy truly is a deadly sin.”

It was a drawing of Killer Frost crouched in a feral position, staring forward with blazing eyes, jaw hanging open and teeth bared, absolutely soaked in blood.

There was just blood everywhere. Blood on the body, blood on the claws, blood dripping in horrifying realistic threads from the mouth, blood all over the blank, white floor beneath the beast, blood squirting from the remains of the carcasses that had presumably been gored.

The image left Anne with so many questions- What did this represent? Who were those corpses? Was Joan jealous? And if yes, who was she jealous of?

One thing was certain, though- Joan was startlingly good at drawing gore. A sketch of Killer Frost holding its own gooey, bloody esophagus and larynx in another photo just proved that. There was even one of the dragon ripping its own throat out while the faint outline of what appeared to be three ghosts encouraged it.

It was strange to see such mishmashes of horror shoved in between adorable sketches of sleeping baby lambs and fluffy Wooloos. It also left Anne with growing worry for the artist.

When she finally finished going through the profile, Anne decided the follow the account and became the thirteenth follower.

This time, thirteen would not be an unlucky number.

———

Five books were left on Anne’s dressing room table the next day, all with a colorful dragon on the cover, and a note that read, “I didn’t know if you only wanted one book or all of them, so I just left the first arc. Let me know what you think! :) -Joan”

“Fan mail?” Cleves asked, peeking over to the table from where she was getting ready.

“Nah,” Anne replied. “Just some books.”

“Sounds very cool,” Cleves chuckled before returning to dousing her hair with hairspray.

“Extremely.” Anne said, then set out to find and talk to Joan before the show. She could get her hair and makeup done later!

Except she couldn’t find the girl anywhere. She asked around, but nobody knew where she went. And she was definitely there because Anne saw her onstage right before the performance, but, by then, it was too late to speak to her. Anne just decided to see her afterwards, which was easier said than done because, once again, Joan was nowhere in sight.

Anne was about to give up, since it was almost time to leave, but then she spotted the girl in the break room playing a card game by herself at the round bar table. She considered charging in and barking at her about where she’s been, but she didn’t want to freak her out, so she just walked in calmly.

“Hey, Joan,” She said cooly, noticing the way the music director’s hand froze as she was setting down a card. She grabbed a water bottle from the mini fridge and sat down at the chair across from Joan. “Whatcha doing?”

“Just...playing a card game my brother taught me.” The girl replied meekly.

Joan had a brother? The articles on her said nothing about him...

“You had cards back then?” Anne asked, as if she hadn’t been born in the same time period.

“No, we used strips of wood we would tear off from people’s houses and carved symbols on them with knives.”

Anne blinked.

“...Oh. That’s...”

“Concerning?” Joan finally glanced up from her deck of cards to look at Anne. A ghost of a smile graced her lips for a moment before she tilted her head back down with a light laugh. “I know.”

“Mind if I play?”

She’s glanced at again- scanned, as if Joan was expecting her to pull something and make a joke out of her. But then she gave in and began collecting the cards from how they’re laid out on the table.

“This game is too complicated to explain,” She said. “But we can play Speed?”

After a quick rundown of the rules, Anne agreed and the game began.

And honestly? It was great. Joan genuinely laughed and smiled as they playfully bickered and argued over the card game. She almost looked like a happy little lamb frolicking in a field of flowers.

On their third round, Kitty peeks into the break room.

“There you are, Annie!” She said. “I was looking for you!”

“Oh, hey, Kit!” Anne said. Out of the corner of her eye, she definitely saw Joan clench her jaw. The drawing of Kitty and Killer Frost’s claws and then the bloody sketch briefly flashed in her mind. “What’s up?”

“We’re leaving,” Kitty informed. “We had dinner plans tonight, remember?”

Joan sighed softly and began to pick up the cards. Anne gently pressed her hand down.

“I think I’m going to pass tonight, Kit.”

Both blondes looked shocked- Joan more than Kitty from the way her head whipped up fast enough to give her whiplash.

“How come?” Kitty asked, clearly confused. “I thought you really wanted to go to this pub...”

“I know, but I’m hanging out with Joan right now.” Anne said. “Just bring me home something if you can!”

Kitty blinked several times, glanced at Joan, then nodded and walked out.

“You didn’t have to stay,” Joan whispered.

“I wanted to, though.” Anne assured her. She gently took the deck of cards from Joan’s clenched hands and began dealing them out. “Wanna keep playing Speed or try War? I’ve played with Aragon before. I swear, she ALMOST broke my nose in anger!”

“You followed me last night.”

Anne blinked.

“Yeah, of course,” She said. “I had no idea you could draw so well. You’re very talented.”

A hot pink blush dusts Joan’s cheeks and she looked away. She anxiously plays with the corner of an ace of spades. The slight drizzle that had been tapping on the window starts to pick up.

“I-”

She’s embarrassed, Anne realized. Embarrassed and horrified because she knows Anne saw the gruesome drawings she had made.

She believes that Anne thinks she’s sick. Or a freak. Or a monster.

Anne would admit that they’re a little weird, but a lot of artists liked to make horrific art. Nothing wrong with that, especially if they were vents.

“Joan-”

“Why are you doing this?” Joan asked quietly. She looked up and centuries worth of loneliness and neglect and pain reflect in her stormy grey eyes. “What do you want?”

Finally, Anne understood.

“Look,” Anne said. “I know we don’t know each other that well, but I’m still worried about you. No one deserves to be alone.”

Joan froze. She just stared at Anne in shock for a long time before tears fill her eyes and start to run down her cheeks. She tries to stop them, but it’s clear she’s been bottling this all up for a long time and won’t be able to hold it back any longer.

“Y-you want to be my friend?” Joan whispered.

“Yes, Joan.” Anne answered her honestly, not missing a beat. “You deserve someone who cares about you.”

The most heartbreaking whimper Anne has ever heard strangled itself out of Joan’s throat. The tears start to come down faster.

“N-nobody— Nobody has ever w-wanted to—”

“Oh, Joan...”

Anne quickly got out of her chair and walked around to Joan’s side of the table. She wrapped her arms around the girl and she immediately slumped into her embrace, clinging back like Anne was her life line.

“Oh, Joan,” Anne said again. “Oh, you poor, sweet little thing...”

Joan began to openly sob against her shoulder. Her hands claw at the back of Anne’s shirt, desperate for a good hold.

“I’ve- I’ve been alone f-for so long—” She wept.

“Shh, shh,” Anne hushed her. She began to rub her back soothingly. “I’ve got you now, honey. I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.”

That elicits a sharp whimper from Joan, who burrows herself even closer to the queen’s warmth. And she stays like that, half slid out of her stool, clutching onto Anne Boleyn like her life depended on it until she was able to choke back the rest of her tears.

“Feeling any better?” Anne asked. She was still rubbing Joan’s back, as the girl had yet to pull back from the embrace.

Joan shrugged weakly. “A-little.” She croaked. “N-not...not good. But better. B-because you’re here.”

Anne’s heart simultaneously broke and melted.

“You sweet girl,” She said lovingly. “I want to be here for you from now on. Is that alright?”

Joan nodded. “Please...”

“Alright,” Anne said. She gently pressed Joan back and gave her her water bottle, which she never actually opened. “Drink something for me, sweetheart.”

Joan obeyed and took a few small sips of the water. It soothed her dry throat, which was weak from the outpour of emotions.

“Good girl,” Anne said encouragingly. “Hey, here’s an idea! Why don’t we go back to my house and watch a movie? I know there’s a tray of lasagna we could heat up! If you want to, that is.”

“N-no, that’s-” Joan sniffled. “I would really, really like that...”

Anne smiled warmly at her.

“Wonderful.”

———

When the other queens came home later that evening, none of them were expecting to see Anne sitting on the couch with the music director’s head in her lap, but that’s the sight they were greeted to.

They both looked content, Anne with a loving smile on her lips and Joan with a peaceful expression settled on her face as she slept. One of Anne’s hands was stroking through Joan’s hair and the other was holding a book, which she looked up from when the front door opened.

“Hey, ladies,” She said, momentarily setting down Wings of Fire- The Dragonet Prophecy. “How was dinner?”

———

A day later, Anne got a notification on her phone saying that @force-be-with-ewe had posted. When she checks it, she sees a digital drawing of Killer Frost being nuzzled lovingly by a large, emerald green dragon.

The caption simply reads, “Thank you for giving me a chance”

#six the musical fanfiction #six the musical fanfic #six fic #six fanfiction #six fanfic #anne boleyn #jane seymour #katherine howard #joan on the keys #anna of cleves #catherine parr #catherine of aragon #nana boleyn #in aeternum little lamb

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yumeka36 · 5 years

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Frozen 2 story/lore complete analysis

Foreword: Even after writing my review a few days ago, there was still so much more I wanted to say about Frozen 2. Since the movie had its worldwide release, I've seen many posts by fans debating and interpreting the events of the plot and posing the same questions and concerns over and over. But so far I haven't seen anyone attempt to tackle everything in one comprehensive "guide." Since I'm the type of person who doesn't like posting bits of my thoughts here and there and would rather just say everything all at once in one big post and get it over with, that's what I'll be doing here: examining every major plot point of the movie in somewhat chronological order and giving my detailed interpretation. I'll be using evidence from the movie itself and the limited official sources we have such as the recent Into the Unknown podcast with Jennifer Lee, The Art of Frozen 2 book, and a few others. I'm writing this not only as a means of getting out all the thoughts and feelings I still need to express, but also to help others understand and appreciate this imperfect but still beautiful movie. I've written heavy lore analysis posts about other fandoms before (Five Nights at Freddy's lore was way harder!) so it's something I'm familiar with and enjoy doing. I think I'm pretty good at dissecting answers using even the most minute story details

-Note- there's a high probability that as the months and even years go by, we'll get more official evidence through books, interviews, merchandise, and maybe even new animated shorts and sequels that may invalidate some of the things I describe below. I'm considering coming back to this post at a future date to correct myself if enough of what I say is proven wrong. Let's see how long my interpretations can last!

King Runeard and the dam: Because King Runeard feared the magic of the Northuldra, he came up with a plan to construct a dam that would weaken their resources, under the guise of it being a gift, a bridge between the two villages. The dam disrupted their water sources, causing negative environmental effects on the forest. Since he feared the power of the spirits, it made sense he'd try to destroy the Northuldra in a subtle way rather than wage a war. The dam probably took many months to construct, so we can make the assumption that the group of Arendelle soldiers he brought to the forest as seen in Agnarr's flashbacks stayed with the Northuldra for a while. Further evidence is scenes of the Arendelle soldiers and Northuldra doing reindeer riding together, plus the memory in Ahtohallan of Iduna talking to Agnarr when he's reading a book. Obviously the two of them forged a good relationship during the months Agnarr stayed there. As this time went on, the Northuldra leader began to realize that the dam was doing more harm than good, so King Runeard had to make his final move. Once the war broke out, Iduna made her decision to save Agnarr and "stowaway" on an Arendelle wagon that managed to escape before the mist covered the land. One of the memories seen in "Show Yourself" is young Iduna calling to the spirits for help. We saw in another memory Elsa encounters, as well as Agnarr's flashback in the beginning, that Gale answered her call for help and carried Agnarr into the wagon, and Iduna followed. Since the Northuldra and Arendellian soldiers left behind in the forest were still at odds with each other, and the symbol of the atrocity, the dam, still stood, the spirits remained angry and kept their magic dormant, no longer letting the Northuldra use it. The elements still existed and behaved normally, but no longer in the magical ways the Northuldra were using them for.

The four spirits: The movie tells us that the four spirits are air (Gale), fire (Bruni), water (Nokk), and earth (earth giants). But we also are given the impression that they do a whole lot more than just use their elements. First off, it's discovered that they gave Elsa her powers as a gift because Iduna did the right thing by saving Agnarr even though he was the Northuldra's enemy (Anna put the pieces together and told Elsa during the shipwreck scene). It was a sign that the two sides could learn to get along again so they wanted to give Elsa the ability to find out this truth (use her ice to freeze the water's memories) should she choose to. This is also supported by the fact that the spirits evacuated the people of Arendelle in anticipation of Anna and Elsa discovering the truth and choosing to destroy the dam: the spirits wouldn't want to kill the people of Arendelle as not only would that be pretty evil, but the idea is for the Aredellians to realize the wrong their people committed and correct it, not to die for the sins of their ancestors. But again, this means the spirits – as in Bruni and the rest – did all this, and yet they don’t seem like creatures that make rationale, moral decisions (seriously, Bruni is a baby~). Like, I'm imagining the four of them having a "spirit meeting" (they probably communicate telepathically) and Nokk is like "yo, that Iduna girl did a good thing, let's give her daughter ice powers so she can come back and freeze all the water memories and discover the truth" and Bruni's like "sounds good" and Gale's like "let's do it!" Joking aside, I know even though they're represented as being non-human-like, there's more to them than that. It's similar to Japanese Shintoism in which gods and spirits can exist everywhere and take many forms, often animals, but that doesn't mean they don't have wisdom and power beyond that form. Bruni and the others must be like that too, a certain omnipotence beyond their physical form. Obviously they can control the elements in areas where they're not present (when they stopped all the elements in Arendelle at the beginning of the movie) as well as other godlike phenomena like granting powers to humans. Again, the exact nature of the four spirits and how they can carry out these extraordinary actions/decisions is one of the plot elements I mentioned in my review that's glossed over because there's simply not enough time to delve into it as it's the kind of thing that would take Harry Potter-sized books to fully flesh out. Like any other magical element in fairy tales, it doesn't pay to try and understand the exact "whys" and "hows" of the four spirits in Frozen 2 – I think what we're given in the movie and a little creative interpretation is enough.

Iduna and Agnarr: What did Iduna do immediately after she and Agnarr escaped the forest? The only evidence we have is a scene in Ahtohallan where she tells Agnarr (when they're both adults) that she needs to tell him who she really is and where she's from. This makes it clear that she separated from him after she saved him and stayed away until she had grown up enough that he wouldn't recognize her as the girl who had saved him. Interestingly, the Frozen 2 Junior Novelization book includes an extra memory Elsa passes by in Ahtohallan where she sees young Iduna in an orphanage in the woods outside Arendelle and a voice that says "No one knew who you were, you didn't have any family with you" (the book doesn't say who the voice is). The book also says that Iduna had put on some Arendelle clothing in the wagon she stowed away on with Agnarr. This further solidifies the fact that she was able to hide her identity as a Northuldra and somehow met up with Agnarr many years later after they had both grown up (exactly how she went from an orphan to meeting and then marrying the king of Arendelle is a story for another time). At some point the memory we saw played out where she finally confessed to him about who she was. Exactly when this happens though I'm not sure but the timing doesn't have a big impact on the plot. Obviously it'd have to be some time before they set off to find Ahtohallan. I'd like to think she confessed some time after Elsa accidentally struck Anna with her magic. They then spent many years secretly researching magic in a hidden room, as is described in The Forest of Shadows book (it's likely Agnarr was the only person who knew she was Northuldra). Eventually they made the decision to try and reach Ahtohallan themselves under the guise of going to the Southern Seas.

The voice: I've seen two interpretations of who the voice is – either the voice is within Elsa herself or it's Iduna's ghost/spirit calling to her from Ahtohallan. In the Into The Unknown podcast, Jen says that the voice Elsa hears is her mother's but doesn't go into detail. I don't think Iduna's ghost is literally calling to her but rather the magic side of Elsa, her mother's side, is what's calling her to Ahtohallan. When Elsa reaches the final chamber in "Show Yourself" after embracing her role as the fifth spirit, she's able to reveal the memories there…and the first memories she sees are Iduna's memories. The Iduna we see singing with her doesn't seem to be a memory since it's addressing her directly, so I think that Iduna's spirit/ghost lives on in the depths of Ahtohallan, waiting for Elsa to discover who she really is. Since we see young Iduna in the memory doing the voice (from when she's calling Gale to help her save Agnarr) the melody of the voice must be a universal call for the spirits that Iduna knew, being a Northuldra. As for why it took so long for Elsa to start hearing the voice, she was too consumed by fear and notions of isolation in the first movie to even think of her powers as a gift and what purpose they could serve. It took three years of being accepted by Anna and the people of Arendelle for her to reach a level of comfort that she could start thinking of grander things, like wanting to learn the origin of her powers and if there's some greater purpose she was meant to use them for. These feelings triggered the "magic side" of her, her mother's side, to starting crying out as a voice in her head. When she finally decided that she wanted to follow it, the spirits sensed that desire and awoke, then proceeded to evacuate Arendelle, in anticipation that she'd discover the truth and choose to do the right thing.

Why ice powers? As I described earlier in the post, although it's stated in the movie that Elsa's powers were a gift from the spirits, it was not stated specifically why they chose ice powers. I kinda like that we weren't spoon-fed that answer but once you think about what Elsa does with her powers throughout the movie it becomes clear: since water has memory, ice magic can freeze those memories and give them physical form, creating visual "moments in time" that can be used to discover the truth. No one but Elsa could have used her magic to freeze the memories in Ahtohallan and elsewhere in the enchanted lands to show the past events.

The shipwreck: It was revealed that Iduna and Agnarr were headed for Ahtohallan because they believed they could find out the secrets of Elsa's powers, evidenced by what Iduna wrote on the map and their final words during the shipwreck: "Ahtohallan must be the source of her magic" and "We keep going for Elsa." Olaf questions how they were able to get through the mist, suggesting that maybe they perished before the boat actually got to the enchanted forest, but the map reveals that they knew where the mist was and took a detour through the Dark Sea (this is better described in the Frozen 2 Junior Novelization).

Ahtohallan: Although the lullaby states that Ahtohallan is a river, we find out that the water is actually frozen, forming a huge glacier that still retains all memories. The main clues we have for exactly what Ahtohallan is lies in the notes Iduna wrote on the map that Anna and Elsa find in the shipwreck: "The end of the ice age, the river found but lost, magic's source, Elsa's source." The "ice age" could be referring to the fact that Ahtohallan, once a river, somehow froze during an ice age (when this ice age took place is unknown) becoming a glacier that drifted out into the Dark Sea. "The river found but lost" means the river still exists but is "lost" in the sense that all the memories are now hidden in the glacier instead of a free-flowing river. This could also refer to the fact that even if one finds the river, unless they have powers bestowed by the spirits, the memories will still be "lost" if they don't have the required magic to decipher the memories. The part that refers to Ahtohallan as "magic's source" is the most interesting. Ahtohallan isn't only the source of memories but of magic, evidenced by the fact that we see each of the four spirits connect with Elsa in Ahtohallan, with each of their elemental symbols becoming part of her as she takes her place in the center. Her transformation into the fifth spirit couldn't have taken place anywhere but Ahtohallan – it's a "hub" for the spirits' magic, since magic is required to reveal the memories there. The last part of the note, "Elsa's source," reinforces this: as I described in the section above, the power to manipulate ice and freeze water is essential for finding the secrets of Ahtohallan, and this power is what the spirits gave Elsa. How this actually works isn't too complicated: all the memories we see are either of Elsa's own memories or of people close to her, like Anna and her parents. I think it's logical to conclude that all memories exist in Ahtohallan, but the further away those memories are from you – i.e, memories of someone you don't know, memories from a long time ago, or memories that very few people know about – can be considered "deep" memories that require going further and further into the depths to uncover, running the risk of going "too far." (Ahtohallan memories are different from memories she revealed in the forest: there she froze the memories that existed in that spot specifically whereas Ahtohallan contains memories unbounded by time and space, but with the risk of going too deep). This is why she had to go to such lengths to find out what really happened with King Runeard: not only was this a memory from someone she never actually met from decades ago, but it was a secretive memory only a couple people knew about. But even though Elsa has ice magic, there's no reason to assume she's invulnerable to other ice magic, especially the "ultimate" ice magic straight from the original source, Ahtohallan. This is why even she succumbed to the consequences of going too far into deep memories – the lullaby states "not too far or you'll be drowned," but since Ahtohallan is a glacier now, you get frozen instead. @spicylove4ever wrote a post interpreting Ahtohallan too, I recommend it.

The fifth spirit: Elsa's role as the fifth spirit is probably the most debated topic in Frozen 2 – out of all the plot points I describe here, it's the one that has the least information to go by. All we know of the fifth spirit is that it’s a bridge between humans and the magic of nature. By the end of the movie, Elsa is shown to have a closer bond with the four other spirits and her magic has gotten stronger, but that's about it. She was shown to tame the spirits during her journey, but she never tamed the earth giants, which makes me believe that taming them was not a prerequisite for becoming the fifth spirit: the spirits became active and sought her out, being drawn by her magic, and she tamed the ones she encountered. She probably would have tamed the earth giants too if Anna hadn’t stopped her. But we see that even the earth giants are friendly to her after her transformation, so I feel their connection to her is the result rather than the requirement. But now that the wrong of the past has been revealed and corrected, as far as what she does everyday in the forest and how much of it is "duty" vs "self-fulfillment" remains unclear. But one thing that is clear to me that people are concerned about is whether she's still human or is now a literal goddess/spirit. I think the term "spirit" is purely figurative. She never actually transforms into another type of being or appears to ascend to some astral plane beyond the human world – she literally just gets a new dress and hairstyle, just like the first movie, and besides being more powerful and more confident in herself, everything else about her is the same. She wasn't immune to dying to Ahtohallan's magic either, showing that she's not immortal and didn't gain ultimate powers over all. Jen even states in the podcast that she considers both Anna and Elsa the fifth spirit/bridge, further showing that the term is used loosely and not meant to be taken literally. Another point is how different Elsa is compared to the other spirits: they have a sense of being ancient, ethereal creatures that have existed unchanged for who knows how long. Unless something outrageously different about Elsa is revealed now that she has this new role, all evidence still points to her being a normal human that happens to have magical powers. Another interesting point is that there doesn't seem to be a fifth spirit until Elsa came along, so one could make the assumption that fifth spirits are humans like her who are given special magical gifts when the need arises. So they don't exist all the time, and since they're human, they have the lifespan of one and don't live on forever like the other four spirits. If another human was the fifth spirit before Elsa, they probably lived long ago, before even King Runeard's time. Honeymaren said that people thought they heard the fifth spirit call out the day the forest fell, but we know that cry was actually young Iduna calling to the spirits to help her save Agnarr. I don't believe Iduna was the fifth spirit before Elsa since there's no evidence that she had powers, only that she used the spirits' powers the same way the other Northuldra did. And if she was the fifth spirit, why couldn't she have gone to Ahtohallan to reveal and correct the past instead of Elsa? No, the fifth spirit has to have magic in order to utilize Ahtohallan, it has to be a human born with magic to have both the human side and magic side. So whether there was a fifth spirit before Elsa and who it was, or if there wasn't, why is a fifth spirit needed now and what that role entails, are questions that have stumped even me. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for any events and panels with the Frozen 2 creators in the coming months/years, hoping for an opportunity to get these answers from them…assuming they don't get answered beforehand in future franchise installments (otherwise debates like this will continue forever with no resolution!) @vuelie-frost also wrote a good post about Elsa's transformation into the fifth spirit and what it means so give it read.

Destiny and choice: A common criticism of Elsa's story arc in Frozen 2 is that she was forced into her destiny as the fifth spirit and didn't really have a choice, since the only way to get the voice to shut up was to go to Ahtohallan. This is true, but the important part is what happens after that. She no longer hears the voice once she finally realizes that she's the fifth spirit, so once the forest was saved and everything was resolved, she definitely had a choice at that point to return to being queen of Arendelle or stay in the forest and cultivate her connection to the other spirits. If I were in her position and had that kind of incredible power, no matter how happy I am with my life, I'd always want to know why I had such a gift and if there's a higher purpose I could use it for. In the podcast, Jen said that Elsa was a good queen but had an even higher calling and one she eventually feels more comfortable with. She also mentions that she still considers Elsa an introvert, further confirming that she still retains her humanity and didn’t suddenly become “perfect” after her transformation. Elsa's obviously overcome with joy when she finds this out in "Show Yourself," so is it really that outlandish that after this emotional self-discovery she decides to continue exploring this newfound purpose? And again, it's not like she's completely giving up her family for this new role because she still sees them often. She can now satisfy both of her desires – learning more about her powers and connection to the spirits while still maintaining her bond with her family. I really wish the movie made this a bit more clear – even just one more short scene of Anna and Elsa together after Anna becomes queen and a few words on how they each feel about their new roles would have put minds at ease. But for what they gave us, it can still easily be interpreted this way.

The flood: Another criticism I've heard for Frozen 2's ending is that Arendelle should have been washed away in the flood, showing that they had to make a true sacrifice to right a past wrong. One of the pages of The Art of Frozen 2 describes an alternate ending where Arendelle castle (it just says "castle," not sure if the rest of the kingdom was spared) was destroyed in the flood and then rebuilt, incorporating some Northuldra elements. With the way the movie actually ended, nothing was sacrificed…but why do we need a sacrifice? I know the mythology book that leaked months before the movie's release said that Pabbie predicted that a sacrifice had to be made…but that same book never actually described the flood and said that Arendelle was saved in the end, so who knows? But whether the sacrificing of Arendelle was something early in the story's development that was eventually scrapped, I think the outcome we got now is just as valid. The final version of the movie had no hinting of any sacrificing that needed to be made, only about discovering the truth and doing the next right thing, which is just what Anna and Elsa did. But in a way, they did make sacrifices, or at least they intended to, with Elsa going too far into Ahtohallan so she could uncover the truth, knowing it could lead to her death, and Anna destroying the dam, knowing it means destruction for Arendelle. And because they were willing to go that far to set things right, the spirits rewarded them by saving Elsa who could then save Arendelle. While the message of the alternate ending was "a sacrifice must be made to right a past wrong even if the current generation had nothing to do with it," the message we actually got was "if you do what is right and true even if it means making a sacrifice, things may still turn out better in the end." I think both messages have merit but the creators eventually decided to go with the latter, which isn't any points against it in my opinion. Of course, the flood still could have hit Arendelle accidentally, for example, Elsa wasn’t able to reach it in time. But considering all the hardship and grief the girls had gone through and how the movie already went to a pretty dark place in “The Next Right Thing,” I can’t fault the creators for wanting to make the ending as happy as possible, with Elsa feeling triumphant that she was able to keep her promise to protect Arendelle and Anna not having to lose her homeland.

The bridge: When Honeymaren explains the fifth spirit to Elsa, she describes it as a bridge between humans and the magic of nature. This makes it seem like Elsa herself is the bridge (since she's a human with magic), but as she says to Anna at the end, a bridge has two sides and their mother had two daughters. After giving it some thought, I realized that yes, Elsa is the embodiment of the fifth spirit, but the bridge part of it comes from Anna…as in, Elsa could not have succeeded with her goal without Anna's help. Even Jen confesses in the podcast that Anna is definitely the bridge part but she considers both of them the fifth spirit in a way. Perhaps the spirits knew that magic alone wouldn't be enough, they knew that in order to discover such deeply hidden memories, one would have no choice but to "go too far" into Ahtohallan. More evidence for this is that the mist only parted for Elsa when she was holding Anna's hand (we don't see them each alone try to pass through but we do see Elsa shoot her magic into the mist only to have it bounce back). If Elsa were to do this alone, she still would have discovered the truth but she definitely would have had to sacrifice herself to do it…and in doing that, who would there be to act on the truth and destroy the dam. Even if she was able to relay the message back to the others via ice magic sculptures the way she did for Anna, would someone like Matthias who's still bitter towards the Northuldra and fiercely loyal to Arendelle go through with destroying the dam? That's why Anna had to be there: Elsa was the part of the bridge that used magic to discover the truth and Anna was the human side that had to carry it out. When Anna chose to do the right thing and destroy the symbol of the past wrong (the dam) even though it meant flooding her homeland, the spirits rewarded both sisters’ actions by saving Elsa who was then able to save Arendelle before the tidal wave hit. It's not clear whether the spirits influenced Anna's birth the way they did Elsa's just for the sake of all this, but it's possible. And this all goes back to the major emphasis the filmmakers have made about Elsa being a mythical character, Anna being a fairy tale character, and how, similar to the first movie, Elsa would have the typical tragic fate of many myths were it not for Anna's fairy tale influence saving the day. Of course, Elsa’s statement at the end that “they did this together” is true, but when she follows-up with “and we’ll continue to do this together” and, later, Anna says as the statue of Iduna and Agnarr is unveiled, that their “land and people are now connected by love” can only imply that the sisters will be working together to mend the relationship between Arendelle and the Northuldra. We don’t actually see this unfold in the epilogue due to how limited it is and, assuming it takes place not too much later (a month maybe?) it’ll take time for the two sides to truly start mingling. But this, along with how our beloved sisters adapt to their new roles, are stories begging to be told in Frozen 3. Keeping the faith that it will happen someday~

Sources:

Into the Unknown podcast with Jennifer Lee

The Art of Frozen 2

Frozen 2 Junior Novelization (thanks @99884321 for the screenshots!)

#frozen 2 #frozen 2 spoilers #frozen2 #frozen #disney frozen

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seyaryminamoto · 5 years

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May I ask - why Ozai likes Ursa more than Azula? Keep in mind you're not the only author who choose this portrayal and I'm as confused by it as Azula is

Oh, I know I’m not the only author who portrays it that way. These guys

did it too! :’D Though this guy

backtracked on it, to a fault, merely turning Ozai into someone who gives zero shits about anyone ever. Which means he gives the same amount of shits for Azula and Ursa. His Ozai is surprisingly fair on that front!

Alright, all jokes aside, the main reason many of us interpret Ozai’s relationship with Ursa as a little more complex than originally presented, it’s because of this shot:

(Credit: former Piandao.org screenshots, now turned into a Google Drive folder)

That’s the same fountain-pond-thingy where Ursa had been sitting in earlier flashbacks of that episode.

(Credit: same as above)

It’s such a small, simple moment that I suppose most Ozai haters would say it amounts to nothing, yet it actually speaks lengths about his character: why would Ozai stand here, melancholically, before a fountain that is no longer functioning (because in his screenshot, it’s not), a place where his wife used to sit, right on the morning after she left? This is a guy who literally just got EVERYTHING he ever wanted. He is Fire Lord now, thanks to the scheming and conniving and wicked plotting that took place over the previous day. He finally overcame his father and brother’s shadows! So… why would our first shot of a man who finally succeeded at everything he wanted be not a shot of said man rejoicing in triumph, but a shot of a man who is, by all effects, in mourning?

This suggests that Ozai may have cared about Ursa. The fact that we don’t see them angry, arguing or bickering through this episode also suggests that their relationship, while far from a lovey-dovey happy mushy thing, is that of two people who at the very least coexist peacefully. We don’t see any direct interactions between them, so yes, it’s possible they were far more troubled than the episode suggests (I, personally, interpret it that way), since everything in Zuko Alone is seen through Zuko’s eyes. But IF Ursa and Ozai were in such a bad place, to the point where he would have even convinced her to leave as he does in the Search… why would he do this? Why would he stand by that fountain as though honoring Ursa somehow?

All this being said, I personally find Ursa a much more interesting and dynamic character if her relationship with Ozai isn’t that of a victim and his abuser, but of a woman with such sharp wit that, even without being a bender, ergo, representing no physical threat to her husband, still wielded such authority that she could keep this fierce, savage man in check, capable of respecting her when she’s around, and even honoring her when she leaves. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: in my very humble opinion and headcanon, if Ozai ever got close to genuinely loving someone, it was Ursa.

As ever, disclaimer necessary: this does NOT mean Ozai was entitled to Ursa’s love in return, this does NOT mean Ursa is to blame for the man Ozai becomes, I’m not implying this is a situation where “love” would have absolutely saved Ozai from being the man we know him to be. While I do believe that if he had chosen her above his ambitions he might have been ~better~, it was Ozai himself who had to make that choice. I don’t blame Ursa for how her relationship with Ozai turns out, whether in canon or comics or Gladiator, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. Relationships like theirs are complex, difficult and not straightforward: both characters have faults, and both deserve to be held accountable for them. So Ozai deserves being held accountable for sacrificing everything for power, and that’s that.

But finally, getting into your question… why would Ozai like Ursa better than Azula?

Personally, in the way I want to portray them through flashbacks, it’s because Ursa makes NOTHING easy for Ozai, since day one. She isn’t trying to please him, she isn’t just a doormat waiting for him to stomp all over her: she has demands of her own, the first of them respect, and Ozai finds himself giving it, even if he doesn’t quite reason with why he’s doing it. He wants her to care about him, probably as starved for affection as his daughter is later on too, and whenever he made her happy, even if just a little, he would have felt a sense of accomplishment that was absolutely unprecedented for him.

Zuko canonically has described his family by saying they were “happy”, at some point. While no one can say for sure what time period he refers to (it could be the happy times ended when his mother vanished, or perhaps a little before that), I’ve always assumed he wouldn’t have seen Ozai and Ursa as they were in the Zuko Alone flashback and thought “wow my parents are so happy, look at their poker faces! That’s happiness!” So, I believe they actually were happy once, enough to make each other smile or laugh. There’s a simple scene in the first comic trilogy where they’re at the beach with their children, simply sitting together at the sand while their kids play in the sand and water: who’s to say those aren’t the kinds of moments Zuko refers to as happiness?

Compare that to the Ozai we meet in canon: do we ever see him happy in Book 3 about anything but his advancements and achievements? His smiles are always smirks. Every situation he’s in, he’s merely basking in becoming more powerful and fulfilling more of his often-pointless ambitions. While he seems to respect Azula to a fault (she interrupts Zuko in a war meeting and she gets no Agni Kai as punishment, Ozai is Mr. Hypocrisy Incarnate), did we ever see anything that suggested genuine affection for her? While I write him as directly involved in her training, canonically Azula has been trained by Lo and Li, two non-benders. Even a tiny canonical hint at how Ozai may have been involved in helping Azula reach her full potential as a bender could be, to a fault, interpreted as him caring for her a little more than he originally planned to, being invested in her growth for what it is and not only for what advantages it offers him. But instead, the entire extent of what we know about their relationship is that he sends Azula on missions, basically in the capacity of a military agent or leader: as much as this allows Azula to show she’s a badass, does it show Ozai cares about her? Do we have a single hint that he actually is emotionally invested in his daughter?

AT BEST… the lack of punishment for having lied to him about Aang’s death can be, somewhat, interpreted as unwillingness on Ozai’s part to punish Azula too harshly for a huge mistake. Even then, by the finale he outright yells at her before offering her an important “mission” that he can only entrust to her. And that’s their canon relationship, isn’t it? Missions, missions and missions. He hands her missions, she delivers. The consequences aren’t too steep if she doesn’t, but he might even yell at her if she tests his patience too much.

Basically, my take on Ozai respected Ursa, even though Ursa has no power of her own to threaten him beyond her disapproval and displeasure. Because she earned that respect, she was the only person he NEARLY considered an equal. He was willing to surrender if she was adamant about certain things (this is no spoiler, since chapter 9 we all know that, in Gladiator, Azula never learned swordsmanship with Piandao because Ursa didn’t want her to, and to Azula’s eternal outrage, Ozai gave in to Ursa’s demands, just like that!), he was willing to listen to her opinions on whatever was happening in the world, he would argue with her and they’d have disagreements because they were both stubborn as hell. All of this means Ursa’s opinions, beliefs and decisions mattered to Ozai, enough that he would sometimes back down and let her have her way.

Azula, however, has been his pet project, the perfect child, for as long as she has lived. He raised her to be his heir, to uphold his legacy, molded her after himself (even if the result wasn’t at all like him :’D), and Azula dreamt of following on his footsteps for a long time (until her own equal shows up and his influence serves to change the way she sees the world…). Azula, then, is his most loyal ally, and Ozai takes her for granted because of that. She will always be on her side because he raised her to be, and that’s that.

Ozai’s first blast of reality that shows him Azula is NOT unbreakable, that she is NOT undefeatable and that he shouldn’t send into danger willy-nilly? It’s in the White Lotus Attack arc, where he finds her terribly sick in her room and she’s mortified that he’d see her that way. That was the first moment an actual surge of fatherly instincts came over Ozai since Azula was a very tiny kid.

Azula’s rebellions against Ozai in Part 1 are relatively small, and she’s constantly terrified to her very bone whenever she opposes him at something, as in her birthday. Ozai was displeased by it, and she was troubled and wondering how to improve things between them again later on. Pleasing her father is a behavior ingrained in her head from an early age. She wanted to make sure she was on his good side, even if she was growing much more aware of his mistakes, his shortcomings and everything wrong about him by then. Not being on good terms with her father was terrifying for her in those days, terrifying in ways it never was for Ursa: in Azula’s case, it’s learned behavior acquired mainly by seeing, through Zuko, what happens to someone Ozai considers unreliable and disposable. She absolutely doesn’t want to be that.

But it’s not until Part 2 that Azula outright starts to take a stand against her father. And yes, she was terrified too in the Festivals, but she went toe-to-toe with him in front of all his military leaders. Then she took his attempt to punish her, by forcing her to give a public speech she wasn’t ready for, and spun it on itself to both present herself as her father’s soooo loyal daughter while providing the entirety of the Fire Nation with new values to abide by in regards of how they treated slaves and honorary citizens. Ozai’s reaction that time was a petty, small revenge… but he actually was amused by what she’d done. And THAT… that was actual respect from Ozai, for once. He saw his daughter could stand up to him, and get away with it safely. Suddenly she wasn’t just his obedient child-soldier, which was what he had taken for granted that she was: she was a potential leader in her own right. At this point, their relationship changes.

That change takes a turn for the worse after she fails to convince him to carry forward her slavery laws project, and then she discovers Seethus’ assassination spree. At this point, the falling out between them is absolutely dreadful. Ozai doesn’t attack Azula physically, however: he argues with her, snaps back and does his best to convince her that he’s in the right, but she’s 100% certain of the opposite. By this point, Azula is behaving a lot more like Ursa than she ever had before: she defies him, stands up to him, and unlike her mother, she does have literal firepower to back her up.

Point being: AZULA BECOMES A THREAT.

And while they’ve managed to kind of establish a low-key peace after that (though as you may imagine, this new arc is yet more trouble for the relationship between the Princess and her father), Ozai still sees Azula as a threat ever since. He’s willing to trust she won’t do anything too far out of hand, not as long as he makes enough concessions for her, not if he abides by her advice once in a while… but that makes her no less of a threat anyhow. He needs to make her a reliable ally again, and he can’t do that by wielding his authority over her head anymore. Not when she has already shown herself perfectly willing to ignore it.

And that means he respects her in an entirely different way than how he respected Ursa: he didn’t have any reason, Gladiator-wise, to think Ursa wasn’t on his side, they had disagreements but she was his wife and she supported him through thick and thin even in some REALLY shady stuff. Right now, Azula is starting to look like the entire opposite of that: she was the one he raised to be his wholehearted supporter. The one person who would only ever treat HIM as the hero, the winner, the good guy. And now she’s changed her mind about him, he knows it, and he’s worried about what that entails.

It’s ironic that it’s because of Azula’s rebellious bouts, and the cracks in her mask of the perfect daughter, that Ozai’s bottled-up affection for his daughter emerges. I won’t say that somewhere in the depths of his dark heart he loves her… but I will say that every time Azula rises up against him, he sees some of Ursa in her and he automatically takes her more seriously because of it.

Meanwhile, whenever Zuko stands up to him, he basically feels like it’s an ant shouting at the boot that’s ready to crush it. On a REALLY subconscious level, Zuko seems to embody Ozai’s weaknesses, the side of himself he would much rather pretend doesn’t exist. He despises Zuko for it all, because he’s a reminder of his own shortcomings and failures. And even when Zuko tries to rebel, Ozai continues to treat him as a weakling, unworthy of respect, that only warrants being crushed. He’d never be able to act like this with Azula or Ursa.

So, why would I say he cares more about Ursa, or that she’s his actual #1 while Azula is #2? Because Ursa was never a tool, never a source of self-fulfilment: she was someone who he wanted to impress, whose respect he craved and he offered her his own. He valued her, everything she offered him, even if things between them became complicated for an array of reasons. Ursa has always been a sort of blind spot for Ozai, the one person who made him happy in a sense that didn’t involve ambitions and advancement. She was a good influence on him, all around, even if he seldom knew how to react to her influence positively.

That’s not the bond he had with Azula. She was his perfect heir, and that was all he ever expected of her. Canon-wise, that’s all she is. Gladiator-wise, once she stops being ONLY that, Azula doesn’t simply become someone Ozai respects and approves of: she becomes a threat. She is the one and only person in the Fire Nation who can tear down everything he has worked for, and it sure looks like she wants to do exactly that. He has been molding her all her life, only to find she has become his worst possible enemy and now he has to be much more cautious about how he deals with her.

One day, maybe, once his characted develops some more… Ozai might start respecting Azula on the actual same level he respected Ursa. One day, he might realize that, while craving Ursa’s affection and love, he had already earned Azula’s but he threw it to waste. By then, it may be much more difficult to determine who is his #1 indeed… but until that point is reached, he will continue to hold onto the memory of his wife while ignoring that his bond with his daughter is what will determine if he can attain either true salvation or eternal damnation… :’)

#anon #ozai #ursa #azula #gladiator #theirs is a chaotic mess of a family #which is fun and horrible on equal measure #I honestly love Ozai's bonds with both of them Gladiator-wise #because they're a goddamn mess #but it's the most humane thing about him altogether #and that's fun #but he's still a shithead soooooo #yeah

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feuilly-cakes · 4 years

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Eclipse - 3* Review

Alright, so, this book dragged on. Lots happened, but in my opinion it should have been split up, perhaps pre-graduation and post-graduation. I couldn't tell you what order most things happened, whether half the scenes were necessary, or whether I really enjoyed most of the book, because it was just so long. I can say I didn't hate it, and though I was wishing for it to be over by page 400 I knew certain points that were upcoming that had to happen first, so I used them as little goals to reach. For a first time reader I'm not sure how well the length of this would go down as the plot is a bit repetitive, with Bella running off to La Push, going back home, running off to La Push again, running off home, and arguing with Edward, arguing with Jacob, arguing with Alice, arguing with Charlie, arguing with herself... I'm simplifying of course, but it was really a bit long. Despite all this repetitiveness there was growth. This book was mostly about wrapping up old plot-lines and Bella working through her complicated emotions around being changed into a vampire and giving up her human life. Spoilers from this point on. Bella, in this book, has discovered she's not ready to be a vampire yet. Amongst being targeted by unknown vampire threats and her complicated relationship with Jacob, she feels "unease" at her impending deadline, only a few weeks away, after graduation. Edward, bless him, is really trying to convince her to go to college even for a year to give her time to make up her mind fully, but she's having none of it, while also having very real terror at the realisation that she will be leaving everything and everyone behind after graduation, only a week away at this point, to become someone bloodthirsty and wild. Emmett and Jasper have been taking bets on her body count, the news of crazed newborn vampires on a killing spree in Seattle has reached her ears, and she is Panicked. Adding to this, Edward wants her to marry him before he will personally change her, and later add the condition that he will only sleep with her as a human if they are married first. So she's not ready for marriage, not quite ready for vampirism, and her best friend Jacob is being mean about it all. It takes her nearly 400 pages to work through these feelings, and I greatly appreciated her arc in this book. It's very realistic to have these emotions right before massive life changes like marriage or eternal life as a creature of the night. When she is finally ready, she's ready for everything. Another aspect of Bella's story is her new knowledge of her selfish actions regarding Edward and Jacob and even Charlie. She feels very guilty about keeping Jacob around when she's chosen Edward, for both of their sakes, and also for threatening to move out every time Charlie is unnecessarily antagonistic towards Edward. It's a big step up from the last book, where she was constantly behaving badly, though she never acknowledges that Jessica is against her because of her own actions putting them both in extreme danger. Some Vampire things, including Edward, because he didn't really stand out much. -On Edward: He was pretty much obsessed with the idea of being a soldier when he was human. He said he was "too eager to be a soldier" for love. Edward is once more coded as Demisexual, obviously unintentionally, but I'm sticking by this one. He "wasn't the least bit interested" in Rosalie, when everyone else was, and in Rosalie's words, someone who has known him for 70-ish years: "he never wanted anyone" and "never showed the slightest preference" when meeting the beautiful Denali sisters. I will die on this hill. Edward tells Bella he actually wants her to be a vampire "more than anything" but feels that he's being selfish and so denies that wish, hence his being so against it. - Bella feels relief when Edward touches her, "as if [she'd] been in pain and that pain had suddenly ceased." This is either a Bella thing or a vampire thing, and one is more interesting than the other. - Jasper feels gratitude towards the Volturi for their part in keeping the Southern Vampire Wars in check. Bella doesn't understand how he could see them as the good guys, but there's definitely a middle ground to be seen. - Victoria has a babyish voice, "the kind of voice that went with blonde curls and pink bubble gum" and I still can't compute this information. - On Rosalie: She, like Bella, knew the Cullens as a human. She said she "never liked Dr. Cullen or his wife and her brother" because they were all more beautiful than her. She isn't actually that vain in current day, as after what happened to her she "began to blame the beauty for what happened" and wished she looked normal and not beautiful. As far as victim blaming, this isn't really the best point of view, but she goes on to describe how she murdered her attackers. It's still a harmful mentality to be sharing with a teen audience though. After explaining her history and her full reasoning for her dislike of Bella in the beginning and the reason for not wanting her to become a vampire, she apologises for her behaviour and they share a smile. Bella knows they aren't friends yet but they are on their way to not being against each other. It's a good moment of development that I missed in all my previous times reading. Onto the main differences to the films. - The terms of Bella's grounding are different. She must go home straight after school and work, but Edward is allowed over for a certain amount of time in the evenings. - After the Florida trip, Jacob calls Bella's house to check in on her and see if she would be at school the next day. Bella assumes it's to check she's still human. Jacob was checking to see if Edward would be there to talk to him about the treaty in a public area. Bella never gets on his motorbike. She goes to class and has a bizarre conversation with Edward. Her actual first trip to La Push happens a different day, as a split second decision after losing a shift at work, and she drives herself down quickly to avoid being caught by Alice. - The motorbike scene takes place on another day, with Alice as the vampire instead of Edward. Alice has kidnapped Bella to prevent her going to see Jacob when they made plans. At school he turns up and she bolts with him, then later has a fight with him and rides herself on her own motorbike back to Alice. She does take the bike back, after she makes up with Jacob, Edward buys his own motorbike and Bella realises that's weird, and Edward gives her a helmet and jacket so she can ride back on her own with him following for protection to the treaty line. - Jasper tells Bella his story at the Cullen house, in front of everyone, and explains the history of the Southern Vampire Wars in detail. - After getting back from the fight, Bella gets the story from Charlie's point of view. He heard howling, Billy was acting weird all day long, like he knew Jacob would get hurt, and when he was at Billy's he heard a wolf yowling in pain right outside, only for that to stop when Jacob starts swearing up a storm as he is carried inside. Charlie remains oblivious. There were several instances of creepy/gross behaviour, offensive language, uncomfortable situations, and straight up disgusting behaviour that I noticed. I should just call this Red Flags at this point. Let me count the ways, in chronological order. 1. Edward displays some creepy and controlling behaviour when Bella decides to go see Jacob and gets to her truck only to find Edward there and the truck missing a vital part. He refuses to allow her to go to La Push. Throw the whole man out. 2. One of Bella's school friends calls Jacob "the big Indian". 3. "You're kidnapping me, aren't you?"Edward bribes Alice into kidnapping Bella and guilting her into going along with her plans. 4. The bonfire scene. Stephenie Meyer made up those legends entirely, which begs the question: why not make up a whole new group of people to be werewolves instead of bastardising the belief system of a real group of people? 5. Jacob assaults Bella. He kisses her against her will and acts like he hasn't done wrong even after she punches him and makes it clear he's done something terrible. Trash. 6. In response to this information Charlie, a police officer and Bella's father congratulates Jacob and takes his side. He praises him for assaulting his daughter. ACAB. That's all I can say. 7. If the previous incident isn't enough, Jacob later threatens suicide to make Bella kiss him. For clarity: he threatens to kill himself to manipulate Bella into kissing him, then when he doesn't like the kiss he does it again to get a more enjoyable one. Kill it with fire, you disgusting future r*pist. I hate him here. Considering at the beginning he was defending Bella's right to choose and to know everything that happens that could endanger her, these vile actions are a huge departure from his character, and I don't know how we are supposed to believe the idea that he can go back to being the good, friendly Jacob who would never ever hurt Bella. None of that should have happened, and it was pure laziness that there wasn't a more believable reason to make them kiss instead of an assault and emotional abuse. It makes me so angry because when I hated Edward in New Moon his actions were actually in-character for him and made sense, but these efforts to make us hate Jacob and then forgive him are so out of character that its clear how Stephenie Meyer wanted the story to go, and she did a bad job of it. To end on a less angry note, let me slip in these little tidbits. Sam feels "betrayed" that Bella let the Cullens back into her life after they hurt her, and that information makes me want to know even more what went down at La Push in New Moon. Who was she close too? How close? Did Sam become friends with her or does he really know her through Jacob's memories? Also, Edward's been dropping hints about the Pack not being normal werewolves, so there's a bit of foreshadowing for Breaking Dawn.

#twilight #eclipse #twilight renaissance #book review #book blogger #team edward #you know what no im team rosalie #and team dont be fucking racist #and also team stop messing my faves up for more money

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alternislatronemhq · 4 years

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Congrats, JESTER, you have been accepted to AL for the role of OC ORPHEUS HITCHENS (FC: Gabriel Marques). Eeep, wow, how exciting to have a truly reformed character join us here at AL, especially one who’s distantly related to the Blacks! Jester, I fell in love with Orpheus and all of his complexities and faults and determinations. You’ve built a beautiful character and placed him here wonderfully in this plot, and I’m excited to see you continue to build him! Please send in your blog (no sideblogs for first characters, please) in the next 24 hours and be sure to take a look at our new player checklist. Welcome home (once again), we’re so excited to have you join the family!

OOC

name — jester age — 21, soon to be 22 pronouns — he/him timezone — est activity level — only reliably active afternoons & weekends

IC Overview

name — orpheus hitchens faceclaim — gabriel marques (model), naleye dolmans, miles mcmillan age — 25 gender — male sexuality — bisexual patronus — great grey shrike boggart — a coiling basilisk (representative of the lurking threat posed by the dark side and voldemort)

IC In Depth

personality traits —

+ courteous // while not raised in the wealthy, respected pureblooded family he liked to portray himself as belong to in his youth, orpheus still tried to emulate what he thought being a pureblood was. while he no longer quite aligns with the ideals of purity he used to admire, he retains the self-taught, overly formal mannerisms of his teen years.

+ quick-witted // with a honed intelligence and a natural skill for thinking on his feet, orpheus is not one to stay and ponder a decision needlessly ; this makes him particularly adept at dueling or high-action situations, but when needed he can sit still and think things through before acting.

+ confident // orpheus is proud of himself, his accomplishments and his talents.

- reactive // orpheus, for all his attempts at appearing level-headed and refined, has a hot temper and is very quick to lose it.

- conceited // hand-in-hand with his pride comes arrogance, an overinflated ego that’s rarely kept in check and is prone to pushing orpheus into a superiority complex when faced with wizards he deems “less accomplished.”

- abrasive // orpheus’ tendency towards both knee-jerk reactions and assuming superiority means he can be snappish and rude without fully thinking the consequences of his actions through.

character biography —

short version

the grandson of the disgraced iola hitchens nee black, orpheus spent his hogwarts years scornful of his family’s past “involvement” with mixing with muggles and secretly sympathized with some of voldemort’s ideals. it wasn’t until later, when death eaters killed his half-blood mother, that it hammered home to orpheus that his black family blood wasn’t enough to protect him from the wrath of dangerous pureblood ideaology. upon graduating, he vowed to leave that part of his history behind him and strive to be a better man, training to become an auror. when whispers started to spread of darkness rising again, he threw himself further into becoming a better auror, hoping to protect the future generation from the follies he himself was once enchanted by.

in depth

EARLY YEARS Iola Black, after eloping with muggle Bob Hitchens, had one daughter, one Cassandra Hitchens. Cassandra Hitchens followed her mother’s set example and had one son out of wedlock: Orpheus Hitchens, descendant of a pureblood family that had fallen very, very far from the tree. Orpheus was raised near-muggle as far as wizards go, but was still taught from a young age about magic. This had the opposite effect as to what was intended, and instead of feeling like he belonged to both the wizarding and muggle worlds, Orpheus felt like a wizard being forced to live like a muggle.

This resentment was further compounded when he began attending Hogwarts, and got sorted into Ravenclaw. While eager to finally be a part of the wizarding world, as he felt he belonged, learning of his full family history made him even more frustrated with what he’d been denied his whole life. He felt alienated from his housemates, feeling himself above muggle-and-halfborns, but not quite on equal footing with the purebloods. He overcompensated for it, throwing himself viciously into studies to the point where his health suffered. Throughout his life, he’d felt denied something he deserved, and now that he had access to Hogwarts’ library he wanted to claim what was his by birthright.

When he heard Voldemort’s message, the older students’ whispers of a message about reclaiming what wizarding society was owed, of blood purity and power granted to those who deserved it … it was the type of thing that resounded with dissatisfied folks like Orpheus, and he attached to the idea like it was a lifeline. He wanted to be told he was special, that he was someone who deserved good things.

He held his quiet support of the Death Eater ideals for years, but wasn’t in the right social circles to ever reach out, ever join properly. He was locked out by his blood and by the color lining his robes, and many times he lamented not being a Slytherin. A proper Black would have been in Slytherin, but he was a damned Hitchens and never had a chance of joining Voldemort no matter what his teenaged mind convinced him. He tried, of course, but the ones already deep enough to bring him in weren’t interested in the bright-eyed mudblood who thought he could fit in with them.

But he tried, oh, he tried. He practiced every bit of manners a proper pureblood would have, sat up late nights studying ancient bloodlines and histories and fashion. He got everything he could that he thought would make him fit in, be accepted among the people he thought it was worth something to be accepted by. What he couldn’t buy he bribed others for and what he couldn’t afford through even bribery he stole. He saw no shortage of detentions for his petty misbehavior, but few ever saw his actions as anything more than juvenile delinquency.

He was only confronted with the ugly truth of the real situation at the end of his fifth year, when his mother was brutally murdered by Death Eaters mere hours before he arrived home. The situation couldn’t have stared him more brutally in the face than it did in that moment, and he was forced to accept that no matter what clothes he wore or how he talked … he was scum to these people. He was worth less than the dirt under their boots for his blood, and there was nothing he could do about it. He buried his mother and lived alone in that house until the muggle family, two women who already had three children to care for of their own, took notice and started visiting, often bringing him meals and new books.

Their care for him, a stranger, made the grief burn even worse. He had been so drawn in by pretty words and ideas of respect and grandeur he had never even regarded his ideals would be the type to get these kind people killed.

He returned back to the books about old bloodlines, and decided to make a change. REALIZING HE WAS AN IDIOT Orpheus returned to Hogwarts quieter, more aware, and more angry. For the first few months he didn’t utter a word, just sat and watched and learned. And when he was done learning, there were no shortage of fights in the halls, angry whispered arguments in classes and more than one instance of rather brutal duels in broad daylight. Most teachers chalked this up to his mothers’ passing, but nearly every instance was incited by another student suggesting they supported the Dark Lord’s actions, or simply using the word ‘mudblood’. He was still a child, but so were the students in whom he saw the face of evil leering back at him. It was a miracle he didn’t get expelled, and saw even more detentions than he had before. But his grades were kept up, and he learned to be sneakier, even if still motivated nearly entirely by hollow revenge.

He was luckier than he knew, to avoid most of the losses of the war entirely, but it wasn’t a fortune he was pleased with. Even after graduating, still angry, still resenting the man he could have been, he wanted to fight. And Alastor Moody gave him a way to fight. He finished his Auror training before the deaths of Augusta Longbottom and Lord Voldemort, but not by much. He finally got his fight at the tail end of the war, making sure justice came to the Death Eaters he felt betrayed by.

Sometimes, he wondered if his anger was because they hadn’t wanted him. But it made no difference when he was seeing the monsters tossed into Azkaban to rot.

He was still a bit too like them, even now. Talked the right way, acted as stuck-up as any, carried himself with an air of dignity that others would call a big head. But he was vicious in battles and eager to prove himself, and no one ever voiced their suspicions to his face.

The war ended, and people talked of peace. Orpheus thought of old books full of bloodlines and dark magic and curses that made his hair stand on end, and thought this wouldn’t be the end of it.

MODERN DAY The peace did, in fact, calm Orpheus’ anger; leaving him with a scorching temper that, at least, sat as cooled coals rather than an inferno most of the time. He still had nowhere as much respect as other Aurors he worked with, but he did his job well enough, and his colleagues grew used to how absolutely insufferable he could be. It was nowhere near the grandeur he’d once longed for, but he no longer wanted vague, unattainable things like “being a fancy and respected member of the most Ancient and Noble house of Black”. It was silly, really. He’d finally grown content with being Orpheus Hitchens, and the years had both steadied and honed his wand hand for the war he was certain was to come.

He was sure of it. While Orpheus’ colleagues would generally describe him as “annoyingly verbose” and “kind of an arse”, he had taught himself more than just stuffy manners late at night in the Ravenclaw common room. He watched, and listened, and devoured every book he could get his hands on, and came to know many undeniable facts about the world. Firstly, that wizards were absolutely bullheaded fools about many things, blood status included. Secondly, that Alastor Moody is a terrifying force of nature and constant vigilance was less about keeping an eye out for dark wizards and more worrying your attention would slip and your boss would throw his peg leg at you for it.

And thirdly, that Voldemort’s followers were somewhere out there, like a spilled jar of oil coating the floor that you don’t notice until someone drops a match. Orpheus wasn’t sure who would drop the match, but Voldemort had struck it. So he remained insufferably verbose, with a war brewing behind his teeth and a desire to prove himself still gripping his arm, and swore to himself that this time would be different.

plot ideas —

moody // moody absolutely, certainly has heard rumors that one of his younger aurors once held voldemort’s ideals - there’s certainly room for doubt as to young hitchens’ loyalties, and there’s no room for those doubts in the coming war.

hogwarts class of ‘78 (lily, james, remus, sirius, etc.) // orpheus would have been a year or two behind them all, and was a ravenclaw, but he would be loosely familiar with them enough to potentially reach out once news reaches his ears.

sirius black // orpheus knows it’s unfair to resent sirius for something done a hundred years ago. does he hold a grudge against the black family anyways? only a little. still, he may eventually get over it and reach out to his distant cousin over their shared banishment from the family tree (even if sirius undoubtedly has little idea he even exists)

general // orpheus is a young auror who has dedicated himself to keeping voldemort from rising again, even if he has no idea how that would even come to be. while he may not be immediately accepted into the order of the phoenix’s inner ranks, he’s got a good wand hand and is eager to prove himself ; even with the smallest of tasks, he’s happy to help anyone who can tolerate his grating personality and wants to strike back against the dark side.

#harry potter rp #hp rp #marauders era rp #marauders rp #imperia:accepted #orpheus hitchens

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tossertozier · 5 years

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you mentioned possibly doing a ben or mike writing guide.. would you.. be willing to post a mike one. i'm plotting a fic and im struggling to get my mans down?? also i think abt ur fics weekly bare minimum.

hi there!!! i did my best. i tried to not sound preachy or like a know it all bc y’all know i can barely write. i hope this is helpful in some way!! disclaimer of of course this is all just my opinion & there’s no wrong way to write, you’re the only person who can tell your story!!

[[MORE]]

i think the first really important decision you have to make as Person Writing Mike is his

family & background

-are both of his parents alive?

-if yes, what’s their relationship like?

-if no, who’s his primary caretaker? what’s their relationship like?

-if no, when did they die? did he cope well with it? what’s his relationship with their memory like?

these are really really where you gotta start to write mike imo. or any character! i think one thing stephen king is to be admired for is he doesn’t neglect the parent-child relationship as so many people who write youth do. your parents are the most important people in your life for a long time. i don’t think there’s a wrong or ooc way to answer the above questions tbh. canon has really left a wide open field for you to run amuck in.

(example: i’ve mentioned in the past that my & tfat mike being a small adult is no mistake and intentional. it’s a bit of a throwaway scene, but i mention in on pointe that mike’s parents are coming. it’s intentionally done there too. mike is goofier, more outgoing, more immature in general in that fic in the small bits he’s in & that’s all a response to his familial life. )

culture + friendships

after you answer those questions, important follow up questions are:

-are the losers his first set of friends?

-how much social exposure has he had?

-has he dated? who is he attracted to?

-who influences him? (celebrities, family, culturally)

-what are his cultural interests? what does he do in his free time? how would that impact how he interacts with the rest of the world?

again, no wrong way to answer these. i’ve seen a super broad spectrum of indirect answers to these questions. even thinking about where he might pick up patterns of speech can make him feel much more like a realized character. i’ve noticed some people dip fully into aave to an extent that doesn’t even seem logical in their character’s current situation & it can really seem like a caricature, but i think to write mike without any sense of aave at all is a little ?? too. just be cognizant of it is my only real advice here. it doesn’t so much matter as long as you don’t forget who mike is which next point

humor & personality

-what do you think he would find (shows, comedians, youtube videos) really funny?

-does he have something he quotes often? something he started saying ironically but never stopped?

man i know i’m all there’s no wrong way to write mike !! in this post but i will say real quick that i think mike is funny and i don’t really respect depictions of him where he’s not. i think this is where the movies really just fucked up. book mike drops some of the funniest lines of the book. and honest to god tip is to write out a scene as you feel the urge too, look away for five minutes, look back and give half of richie’s lines away. (or... dialogue.) this sounds like a joke but it was what i did when i first started writing & tfat

i’d always be like “n the funny part goes... to richie.” and thats a fandom inclination too. nooooo. avoid this trap. it doesn’t even make sense. have u ever been in a friend group where only one person... makes jokes? that’d be genuinely so weird. especially bc if you give the joke away to someone else, you can also build on it. amazing things start happening when u start thinking of the characters in flexible patterns. like for example, i almost always give absurdist humor to stan now. wholesome to ben.

mike’s humor is largely situational to me. solid comedic timing & he’s an observant person. sometimes i read back my own writing & have to change the pov bc richies making jokes about things he would never ever notice to make fun of. mike would. mike genuinely sees all. i think he’s just got one of the most analytical brain of the losers. & i think intelligence is subjective and people are smart in different ways but i think it’s foolish to write him as anything other than incredibly intelligent both academically and emotionally. he’s just a natural observer and pattern notice-er. which brings me to my next mike thing:

love & selflessness

i think the biggest part of mike being harder to flesh into a fully realized person is the fandom tendency to make him kind and nothing else. here’s mike. he’s nice. next. bc the book kind of points out his selflessness in his decisions and it makes itself one of his strongest character traits.

especially bc nice seems to trump him having any other emotions. ...no?

i believe in general, but ESPECIALLY in the case of mike, that kindness is a choice. it’s one i genuinely believe he’d make, over & over again. but a choice he makes. he gets annoyed with his friends being annoying like anyone else would. he gets hurt when he feels left out. he feels tired & anxious & hungry and all those other human things. sometimes he might not let it show outwardly, but there’s a difference between that and not giving him feelings at all.

people are selfish. it’s a defense mechanism. it’s to protect us. it’s not a bad thing. we think of how the world impacts ourselves first. we don’t always act upon those thoughts or voice them, but don’t forget to let mike have them. he doesn’t need to be happy for his friends all the time, or rooting for them or supportive. he should have his own things going on.

also. mike’s not a doormat. yes, he stays in derry. but those were life-death consequences for generations of children. it’s really not comparable to almost any decision mike would make in a pennywise free universe. yes, he made a sacrifice in the book but i don’t think he’d just lay himself down in any given universe to whatever fate wants to hand him. but this is where i end this topic bc i’m actually only barely beginning to get to this topic in my own fic!

it’s hard writing the losers young sometimes bc i do feel relationships are naturally a little unbalanced based on basic maturity levels as young people. sometimes friendships just are unbalanced bc of who people are at that time. everyone involved can still be good people in these relationships. it’s about growing together and learning how to be good friends to each other.

for example, in &tfat: certain losers are always checking in with others. others are really wrapped up in their own shit and don’t really notice what bothers the others. it would probably take a chart the size of a textbook to explain how i think this dynamic wholly pans out in full. and yeah, i think it grates on mike a little bit that he is always the checker and never the checkee.

but even when mike snaps, even when he gets upset, i always write it coming out of him with a lot of love. i genuinely think mike, regardless of experience in that fic, has the deepest understanding of love as its own concept and an understand of how exactly it rules his life and and his relationships. mike knows to feel strongly about something he has to care about it. there are lots of things he just doesn’t care about. in the book it’s stated he’s difficult to connect with as an adult. he’s distant. he’s focused on what he wants to focus on. i think mike is actually the most interesting when he becomes a little bit of a disaster man with very little time for what doesn’t interest him.

which last thing, dislikes & disinterests

-what annoys him?

-what makes him genuinely angry?

-what bores him to tears?

i always make jokes that i bring up the nastier parts of the losers bc i love nasty boys but thinking of things people don’t like is as much a part of them as the things they do.

for example, in &tfat, i write richie as making fun of “nerdy” things like anything you could find at comic con. i write bev as not giving a fuck about sports. bill doesn’t care about richie’s music tastes. eddie hates getting condescended to.

bc of the ... kind thing, mike’s one of the harder losers to do this with. i genuinely think mike would listen to any of his friends tell him about anything. & he knows, in return, they can’t say shit when he wants to ramble about history. but dislikes can also be super situational.

again, for example in & tfat: mike doesn’t like when his friends talk about college right now. no one is really being sensitive to him at all. he hates getting blamed for stuff that isn’t his fault, mostly bc it keeps happening.

anyway. i based a lot of my mike (mostly sense of humor and personality) off of a mix of real life friends of mine. it’s a luxury. i know. i’ve been blessed to have friends from literally all walks of life & for me borrowing little habits & quirks & sayings & jokes to slip into my fics and characters is my way of writing one massive love letter to those ive known. i hope i’ve helped you in some way anon. n if not.... don’t be sad i’m hardly one to take writing advice from anyway jandjxjx

overall, as i used to do often, i’d genuinely stop myself and say: is this a person, or a convenience for the plot? and if it was the latter, sigh, and get my backspace key ready.

#mike hanlon

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mst3kproject · 5 years

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Daughter of Dr. Jekyll

John Agar’s in this. So, for that matter, is Gloria Talbott from Girls Town and The Leech Woman, and it was directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, who brought us The Amazing Transparent Man. It was released on a double-bill with The Cyclops, which I’ve already reviewed, and while all that seems to promise us an utter crapfest, the premise at least sounded intriguing. Then I actually pressed play, and was greeted by an opening consisting of gray fog, theremin music, and a bored narrator. Oh, yeah. This is gonna suck.

Said opening narration very (and I mean very) quickly introduces us to the tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which a distinguished scientist used a strange potion to turn himself into a werewolf! Wait… that’s not what happened in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at all. Wasn’t it a story about how every person has the capacity for evil and that’s part of what makes us human, and… aw, fuck it, this is a John Agar movie. Okay, sure, a werewolf. Whatever you say, Portentous 50’s Narrator. Moving on.

Janet Smith and her fiancé George Hastings arrive at her family’s palatial home, which she will inherit on her upcoming twenty-first birthday. That’s not all that’s come down the family line, though. Janet’s last name is not Smith, but Jekyll, and she was born after his experiments in lycanthropy had begun. Might she pass it on to her children? Or might Janet herself not be affected? Or is her father’s old friend Dr. Lomas an evil hypnotist using her for his own ends? Wait… what?

After sitting through crap like The Incredible Petrified World and Creatures from the Abyss, I kind of want to give extra points to Daughter of Dr. Jekyll. It’s actually fairly well-constructed for the most part, it’s rarely boring, and the sets representing the Jekyll family estate are very nice. There’s a plot I can follow, I know who the characters are, and so forth… my standards have dropped so low, that’s actually kind of impressive. The creepy delivery guy who hangs around whittling stakes and sowing discontent is pretty effective, himself, even though he’s a very one-dimensional character.

There’s still plenty of badness to be had, of course. The movie appears to be set in the first decade of the twentieth century, but it’s not very committed to that. The sound is frequently weird, from the absolute cacophony of frogs at the opening to musical cues that I swear were stolen from Robot Monster. There’s a random cameo from a very 50’s pin-up girl who appears, gets killed, and vanishes without us ever even learning her name. The climactic fight between George and the werewolf is extremely shatnery and the werewolf makeup is even lamer than in Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory.

Even worse, there’s an entire subplot that kind of doesn’t even bother happening. Most movies that are going to involve angry villagers have some scenes in a local pub or something to show the rabble being roused – even The Giant Spider Invasion had that. In Daughter of Dr. Jekyll we hear about angry villagers from a couple of different people but never actually see them until the pitchfork-toting crowd appears out of nowhere at the end. It’s like an angry flash mob. All we needed was a few thirty-second scenes, but I guess this movie couldn’t afford villagers. The whole climax is obscured by fog that makes it very hard to tell who’s who and what’s going on.

As usual, we’re confused about who our main character is supposed to be. The person whose eyes we see the story through is Janet. It’s Janet whose arc we follow, and Janet who we learn the most about, but she’s a very frustrating character because she is entirely without agency. The only choice she appears to make in the entire film is agreeing to marry George, before this story begins. Otherwise, she’s letting him or Lomas tell her what to do, completely incapable of making her own decisions (she even says as much, when George asks her if she’d like to go to London and elope). When the action occurs, she’s drugged with sleeping pills or in Lomas’ hypnotic thrall.

Even the very premise strips Janet of control over her own fate. She is not the heir to a scientific legacy (as other descendants of Henry Jekyll in other movies have been) but to a genetic one. Tanya in Lady Frankenstein chose to continue and improve on her father’s work. She might not have. Janet, on the other hand, cannot opt out of the family’s potentially tainted DNA. This lack of control is reinforced through smaller events as well: George won’t let Janet change her mind about marrying him, and when the young couple tells Lomas they don’t want his money or estate, he reveals that both were actually Janet’s the whole time. Like Eddie in The Beatniks, Janet is basically a victim even when good things are happening – they always happen to her rather than because of her.

The character who actually tries to take control of the situation, and who I think we’re supposed to see as the ‘hero’, is George – but we know nothing about George. He loves Janet and he has terrible fashion sense, and that’s really it. It’s her family we learn about, and her mental disintegration that follows. George spends most of the movie just hovering on the sidelines watching, and even at the end he doesn’t do very much. He explains what’s really going on to Janet and the audience (though we’ve already figured it out) and gets his ass kicked by a geriatric werewolf. The monster is actually killed by the mob of villagers, while George just stands there with Janet sobbing into his shirt. The movie probably wouldn’t have been much different without him.

The thing that really takes the viewer out of the movie, however, and does so repeatedly for its entire seventy-minute running time, is that it can’t make up its mind what its monster is supposed to be. I already mentioned the narrator’s conviction that Mr. Hyde was a werewolf, but it gets way weirder and more confusing than that.

The servants at the Jekyll house also talk about werewolves, and tell Janet and George in threatening voices that they know how to deal with such creatures. On the other hand, when Dr. Lomas himself tells them what happened, he tells the story we’re familiar with: Dr. Jekyll wanted to separate the good and evil parts of a person, and ended up giving the evil in himself a free agency of its own. This made me think maybe the servants were just a bunch of superstitious peasants? Maybe they called Mr. Hyde a werewolf because they didn’t know what else to call him? That almost started to make sense… but then George picks up a book about werewolves, and in its pages he reads that a werewolf leaves its tomb on the night of the full moon so it can drink blood, and can only be killed by a wooden stake through the heart.

Wait. What?

That… that’s not werewolves! Werewolves are killed by silver bullets! Stakes through the heart are vampires! Werewolves don’t have tombs! What is going on here?

By the time the climax rolls around, we’ve already figured out Dr. Lomas’ evil plan, and sure enough, it turns out he’s hypnotizing Janet into believing she’s a werewolf so she will commit suicide and he can have her family’s money. That makes sense in a Scooby-Doo kind of way, I guess, and I can accept it for the sake of the movie… but then he actually turns into a werewolf and goes out to suck blood! What? What? How did that happen? Was he playing with Jekyll’s formula? But Jekyll turned into Hyde when he took the drug, not at the full moon! What the fuck?

The movie never explains itself. We’re just supposed to take this bizarre conflation for granted. But vampires, werewolves, and Mr. Hyde are three totally different types of monster! Vampires are undead corpses who avoid decay and death by sucking blood. Werewolves are living people who transform under the full moon and kill out of animalistic rage. Mr. Hyde was Dr. Jekyll’s repressed evil side given form. You could probably argue that all three have the same root, in our need to conform to certain standards in order to make society work, but Daughter of Dr. Jekyll doesn’t try to do that. It just mixes and matches story bits at all, combining conflicting mythologies and leaving very visible seams. In fact, we may as well consider this a Frankenstein movie, too!

I can only imagine the fun Mike and the Bots would have had with this confusion. I’m picturing a game show in which they must match the weapon with the monster, and if they lose, they get eaten. Tom would have figured out that you survive by picking what ought to be the wrong answer. Crow would not.

The opening narration of Daughter of Dr. Jekyll notes that Robert Louis Stephenson’s book is a classic, and it is so for good reason. It’s an exploration of the evil within us all, the intrusive thoughts and secret desires we would rather attribute to an alter ego than ever admit to anyone, and the fact that the sinner is as much a part of each of us as the saint. Daughter of Dr. Jekyll throws all that out the window by equating its villain with a vampire/werewolf, making him a sort of mindless monster. It’s confusing and annoying, and its compelling source material deserved far better.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #daughter of dr jekyll #oh shit it's john agar #50s #you is a warwelf #just fuckin weird

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