#how de we feel abt the development

[dollfaceksj]

I just read pt 4 TENSIONNN. im dying of anticipation omfggg😩

well wait no longer!

tell me ur thoughts!

taste of a poison paradise | jjk (m) #5

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you wait by the door whilst tae goes to find jungkook and tell him u’ll be accompanying him home

that sounds weird.

ur just walking home with him

to get something

that’s it.

you tap your heel against the tiles impatiently as you wait for jungkook

once you see him approaching you, you’re already turning to open up the door

you walk out and feel his presence in your wake, confirmed when you hear the door shut behind you

you don’t look over your shoulder to see if he’s there cause you know he is

you can hear his footsteps

you thought you were going to outpace him but your feet in these heels are killing you

like seriously killing you

who told you to wear new heels to a fucking party DUMBASS

“are you in pain?” jungkook says from behind you

you turn and glance at jungkook, watching as he nods towards your wobbling legs

“what’s it to you?”

damnnn can u not be bitchy for once

he sighs quietly and shakes his head, clearly annoyed w your tone but not saying anything since you’re his senior. “are you really going to walk all the way to then walk back if your feet hurt that much?”

can he stop acting like he’s worried good Godddd

“and what do you expect me to do? fly to my destination?” you say, annoyed

you turn and keep walking, continuing to wobble in your shoes

there’s a loud sigh that reaches your ears before a big hand wraps around your bicep and tugs you back

you tumble from the sudden impact and almost curse but the words don’t make it out when he pushes you onto a nearby, short, stone mailbox

a soft yelp escapes your lips as your ass lands on the hard surface

you want to scold him but when you look down, jungkook is on one knee in front of you

HELLO?

what is he DOING

UR TOO YOUNG TO GET MARRIED

well not too young

BUT NOT READY?

your dumb thoughts get set aside when he gently holds your leg up by your calve, the other hand tugging off your shoe

his hand on your skin literally electrifies your entire fucking body

seeing him between your legs is also not fucking helping your case

you manage to squeak out, “what are you do–”

he cuts you off. “for the love of God, be quiet for once.”

a scowl forms on your face. “i’m your senior, show some respect,” you huff, watching as he gently shoves his sneaker onto your foot

“yeah, yeah,” he dismisses you quietly, doing the same to the other foot

what

is

happening

he raises to his feet and picks your heels up, holding them both in one hand by the ankle bands

“what about you?” you nod toward his sock-covered feet

“don’t worry about that.” he starts moving ahead, walking down the dark road and not waiting for you

in his black socks

on the cold concrete

jerk

ASSHOLE

but

a sweet asshole

an asshole with feelings

:(

you feel bad for being so rude to him

it was clearly just a joke when he said he didn’t like you

fragile ego much?

like what are you a MAN??? get your shit together!

you jog up to him, walking by his side

it’s quiet

the only sounds are your footsteps combined with his

you don’t say anything and neither does he

but he instinctively holds his arm out in front of you whenever you cross a road

he automatically closes the gap between you two whenever a stranger walks past

he wordlessly takes the side of the pavement thats closer to the road

who knew he was such?? a gentleman???

well… rumor says he fucks girls cause he loves fucking them… not because he’s collecting them like trophies

or is he just being nice hoping to get laid right now?

son of a bitch. he probably is.

wouldn’t you let him though? he’s pretty hot and rumors say he knows what he’s doing lol

NO!!! be normal. ur friend just asked you to go fetch something and you will

it’s just a 5 minute walk and it really did feel like the shortest walk ever because he stops at a certain building and pulls out his keys

you silently follow him into the lobby, up the stairs and then into his own apartment

you look around the living room and rub your own arms, watching as he sets your heels down on the accent table by his door

he tugs his coat off and walks further in, turning on the lights and taking his socks off right away

“you know,” you say as you scan his decor and furniture. “your place is a lot bigger than tae’s. why are you always there instead of here?”

he digs his hands into the cabinet in his living room before fishing out the medium sized speaker

then, he says, “because chances are, you’re there.”

😂😂😂😂

right

he’s funny you’ll give him that.

AAAAAAAAAA

WHAT IS HIS DEAL?

bro.

why would he even say that man…

“you literally never even talked to me when i was there.” your rebuttal makes him chuckle as he starts rummaging through his other drawers, seemingly looking for a bag that you can carry the speaker in

“so what? i can’t just appreciate that pretty face of yours?” he hums when he finally finds a bag and dumps the speaker inside

what the FUCK

can he just stop.

he’s so full of shit

you roll your eyes and say, “wrap it up, jungkook. you’d never look at me either.”

he walks up to you, bag in hand, shit-eating grin on his lips

“this is why i like you.” he hunches over and stuffs your heels into the bag too. he holds the bag out to you. “anyone else would’ve fallen for that but you see right through my bullshit.”

wow

ha

lol

alright

why are u suddenly

disappointed?

you squint your eyes at him. “and this is why i’ll never give younger guys a chance. so damn childish.” you snatch the bag out of his hands

he chuckles and peers at you through his brows. “you considered giving me a chance?”

your response is immediate. “it never even crossed my mind, be serious.”

why is your heart beating out of control though

if he keeps closing the distance between you he WILL hear YOUR HEART beating like crazy

she’s saying baby, saenggakaji ma….

he tilts his head back a bit, staring you down through hooded eyes

“that’s too bad.” he kisses his teeth with a loud smack. “cause i’ve been thinking about you lately.”

okay

alright

think about something dumb

like a spongebob episode

anything

to make sure he DOESNT know the effect he has on you

“that’s cute,” you start, “and what are you thinking about right now? what league of legends character to play with when i leave?”

but suddenly, he’s standing a bit

too

close?

like if you can smell his calvin klein cologne he’s definitely standing too close

he shrugs his shoulders. “what it would be like to kiss you.”

😀

WOOP WOOP THATS THE SOUND OF THE POLICE

he needs to be thrown in jail ASAP

like IMMEDIATELY.

girl don’t let it get to you. don’t let it get to YOU

it takes you a few moments of speechlessness until you finally decide to speak up.

“ugh,” you mumble as you turn around and open his door, ready to leave. “you’re such a fuckboy. yuck.”

everything happens all at once

jungkook’s chest pressed against your back

his hand pressed against the door and slamming it shut before you can even attempt to leave

you turn around and back up but only to be met with the door

holy shit

HOLY DHIT

hes standing so close

“what the hell?” you manage to ask without sounding *kinda* scared

“what do you know?” the playful tone in his voice is gone.

like … literally gone?

your breath hitches in your throat

ANSWER HIM!!!

“what?”

“what do you know? who told you?”

uhhh

FUCK

this must be why he doesnt want ppl knowing

he probably treats the word fuckboy like a slur and gets offended when its used on him

what a dumbass

you shrug your shoulders, hoping you appear casual. “no one told me, just look at you.”

“no, don’t gaslight me. who told you?”

you frown. you don’t like him pressing you like this.

“no one,” you repeat

he closes his eyes and it seriously looks like he’s trying to keep his temper in check

“y/n. who. told. you.”

well!

sorry tae! ur not about to throw eunbi under the bus.

she’s got all the juice!

you respond with, “taehyung.”

at that, he dryly chuckles and pushes himself off the door

“when?”

“like 2 weeks ago when yall were playing cod at his place.”

then he turns to look at you, a raise to his brow

oh no

why does it look like he just realized something

“so,” he begins as he walks closer to you again. “you sit next to me for the first time, talk to me, make flirty jokes, touch my shoulder, my hair….. after taehyung told you about me?”

silence

pure fucking silence

cause why did u literally just snitch on urself u dumb FUCK

“no i just,” you start but there’s nothing for you to say. you fucked up big time

his lips slowly curl into a smirk so sinister it makes your fucking knees buckle

“shh.” he shushes you, a chuckle leaving his as he shakes his head

“you’ve got it all wrong, jeon.”

your words mean nothing to him, not when his face is closing in on yours

oh

oh shit

fuck

is he really

is he really going to kiss you right now?

what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK

take a breather

FUCK

oh my god

his breath grazes your glossy lips

your breath has picked up so you close your eyes, trying to steady your breath

but you quickly realize that closing your eyes will make it seem like you’re anticipating a kiss

so you open your eyes again, staring up into his eyes with your own big ones

your eyes automatically drop to his lips, almost going cross eyed at how close his lips are getting to yours

his eyes are staring straight into yours, melting your soul from the intensity

your heart shoots up your airway and into your throat when his eyes drop to your lips

fuck fuck fuck

oh my goodness

its really happening

why aren’t you stopping him?

tell him to stop.

tell him to stop right no-

wait…

did you just

hear the door clicking open?

by jungkook?

then he parts his lips to say these next few words:

“you can keep my shoes, i’ll pick them up one of these days.”

and with a final glance at your lips, he pushes himself off the door and walks back into the living room

ha

haha

right

did he just

really do that?

with a persistent lump forming in your throat, you scramble to open the door further and leave his home quickly before you embarrass yourself further

facing him from here on out is going to be fun. CUE SARCASM.

jungkook: 1

you: 0

to be continued

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[familyabolisher]

cws for incest: i'd honestly love to hear you talk abt john and kiriona's quasi-incestous/emotionally incestous relationship if you're up for it! i did get a Vibe from kiriona saying she wants to be her father's cavalier

>:) So I'm not trying to argue for a reading of John and Kiriona as "incestuous" in the sense that I believe they are literally having an in-text sexual relationship with one another; I think that would be pretty easily refutable, lmao. What I'm trying to get at is how the slippery multiplicity of cavalierhood as a subject position combined with the three-way parallels drawn between Kiriona, Alecto, and Harrow (with particular emphasis on Kiriona and Alecto, just because that's what the bulk of Nona focalised) casts the spectre of potential incest such that the kind of exegesis that a patriarchal incest reading provides gains explanatory power.

I'm using a typically Gothic approach to patriarchal incest relations to explain the theoretical model I'm working with not because I think Muir is unilaterally invoking the Gothic in her interpersonal relationships (though it's definitely there, lol—I've written a Lot in the past about reading Gideon/Cytherea as a development on the traditional beats of lesbian Gothic texts, but. Anyway not the point) but just because it's the kind of discourse I'm more familiar with & one that I feel has a pretty significant amount of exegetical use here. I am also, inevitably, going to talk about Lolita (audience groaning). If you’re not familiar with the Lolita reading, you can read it here or a shorter, clearer summary of it here; I’m going to write this on the assumption that we’re all on the same page irt what Lolita does in the text because otherwise I’ll eat up easily 1000+ words just trying to cover ground I’ve already covered elsewhere.

The argument that I'm making rests on a particular understanding of incest between the father and the daughter as an expression of this nexus of ideas concerning power, violation, subjugation, and control of the sort that normative kinship relations facilitate. Sex, and the currency of power we give to sex, becomes a metonym for broader structures of power such that sexual abuse can carve out a discursive path for situating these power structures within hegemony and the social stratification that sustains it. In short: the father who desires/covets/rapes the daughter A) exists within a system of normative kinship relations by which that desire/coveting/rape is socially viable; and B) can illuminate, through the use of metaphor, the nature of those very same kinship relations. When the father treats the daughter as property through his sexual coveting of her (or even through the refracted potential of sexual desire), we can start to open up questions about the daughter as de facto property of the father under the patriarchal relations which govern their kinship; we can consider sexual control as metonymic for other forms of absolute or totalised control that the father holds over the daughter, and we can start to interrogate why that control is possible. In readings wherein the father intervenes on the relationship between a daughter and an ‘outsider’ (if you will), rendered as an intruder in the bourgeois home, we can start to pick at questions of consanguinity as blood preservation and contamination in the white bourgeois household. The point is, patriarchal incest is a versatile exegetical tool for examining systems of power, violence, exploitation under hegemony.

(Of course, I use “the” father and “the” daughter here to refer to undifferentiated archetypes of the form; rather than straightforwardly unspooling from these archetypes, John and Kiriona introduce a number of compelling caveats on the convention that I will come to towards the end of this essay. For one thing, there’s the fact of Kiriona being a butch lesbian, distinguishing her from the heterosexuality and normative femininity of the conventional Gothic daughter-heroine; for another, there’s the fact that both John and Kiriona are indigenous, separating them from the typically white bourgeois Gothic family model. I say ‘separate’ rather than ‘distance’ because I read these distinctions not as a movement away from the paradigmatic blueprint to which I refer, but as discursive developments on the norms that that blueprint presupposes; again, I’ll come to all this towards the end after I’ve laid out the basic groundwork.)

Anyway, building from the explanatory power we can get from this sort of reading, I intend to talk about:

Cavalierhood as a subject position, and the multiplicity of hegemonic sites it can align itself with, and what this multiplicity accomplishes;

Kiriona and Alecto, parallels between the two, and what those parallels manage to do;

Having made my case for the ‘incest reading,’ if you will, what I think that incest reading can illuminate within the text;

The divergences I indicated above and how those divergences manage to expand on the prototypical father/daughter incest literary model.

At any given point in the text, ‘cavalierhood’ (and the necromancer/cavalier relationship) can be expounded upon to represent the discursive fabric of a number of normative social relations. One of course is, as I have talked about before (wrt Gideon/Cytherea), an enfolding of butch/femme into imperialist configurations by which the constructed subject of ‘the butch’ becomes a site for sexual objectification and a retraction of sexual agency. Another is marriage: this one is pretty consistent, but we can refer to, for example:

The recurrent use of the Book of Ruth citing a passage sometimes used at lesbian weddings to describe Gideon and Harrow’s relationship;

The plot of The Necromancer’s Marriage Season which playfully cribs the Ianthe/Harrow/Gideon trifecta and figures Gideon as Harrow’s ‘saintly husband’ to her ‘tedious widow’;

The part during Cytherea’s funeral where someone (Augustine?) misremembers Cytherea’s surname as having been ‘Heptane,’ and we learn that she used Loveday’s forename as a surname—this, to me, is reminiscent of marital surname conventions;

C— and N— getting married in Nona and their resurrected selves being a necromancer/cavalier pair, thus suggesting that those relations can be made roughly equivalent to one another;

Kiriona telling Cam to ‘marry a moron and then die’ and saying that she knows the feeling [of doing so], seemingly comparing Cam’s relationship to Palamedes to the one she has to Harrow and invoking marriage as a shorthand for that relationship in the process;

John and Alecto as the origin point and blueprint of the relation; John and Alecto as Humbert and Dolores or as Annabel Lee and the speaker of the poem; Annabel Lee as ‘my darling, my darling, my life and my bride’;

& of course just, the general obvious resonances of a ritualised relation ratified through a ‘vow’ imbued with immense social significance.’

Diegetically, it’s both a sexually perverse and sexually charged relationship; the conditions under which Magnus and Abigail’s marriage is socially taboo are the same conditions as the ones that, for example, allowed Cytherea to do All That. It bears a relation to how gender functions in our world as a division of labour and a socially imposed imperialist ordering with attached normative articulations; it’s also a military formation that facilitates imperialist expansionism and makes use of its internal logics to indoctrinate and employ child soldiers (cf. of course, Jeannemary and Isaac; cf. also AYU where Judith describes her teenaged self).

Crucially, it bears a relation to structures of kinship, often compatible with rather than contradictory to the sexual currents undergirding it; Augustine and Alfred and Ianthe and Corona (the latter of which are near enough explicitly incestuous) are the obvious touchstones here, but Nona expands the metaphor to encompass not only sibling-sibling relationships (which could very much make for its own separate post) but those of the father and the daughter, ie. John and Kiriona.

There are a number of significant points where Alecto and Kiriona are drawn into one another’s orbit, such that I think it makes sense to read them as narrative parallels (and, as I’ve written about before, to read that narrative parallel as a process of identifying the connective tissue between rape, conquest, weapons of empire, and kinship relations). The key points where this process of paralleling happens has been written about extensively already, so I won’t waste time rehashing them; send me an ask or something if you want me to talk about that parallel in a separate post. Crucially, Alecto and Kiriona represent divergent articulations of the same exertion of control practiced by John; the one that’s given to us through the ‘doll’ metaphor (Alecto as the Barbie to Kiriona’s Midge) in which the subject of John’s [necromantic] control, abuse, extension of power, etc. is stripped of agency beyond what he can turn them into. (It’s the metaphor which powers Lolita, in which Dolores is frequently compared to a doll, has her home with Dick Schiller described as a ‘dollhouse,’ and shortens her name to Dolly; all of this collides with Humbert’s transformation of her into ‘Lolita’ ie. a being entirely controlled by and dependent on his literary discourse, and this transformation then being the process by which his rape of her can be made sense of.) For Alecto, this is her very creation; the creationof the labyrinthine body stylised to represent Barbie, the body that she hates and finds ‘terrible,’ ‘a hideousness,’ of Alecto herself existing as a composite construction of referential touchstones (Adam and Eve, Galatea, Barbie, Frankenstein’s monster with long yellow hair; Annabel Lee, Annie Laurie, Dolores Haze, Alecto the Fury). For Kiriona, this is becoming an incorruptible, impenetrable living-dead weapon of empire.

The third iteration of the doll reading is U— and T—; how the figuring of them as John’s ‘kids’ aligns them with Kiriona, whilst the use of sexually charged language (‘breached with a thermometer’ as penetrative; the constant touching) and the emphasis on a static, dormant state onto which a slightly covetous status is projected, thus refracting sexuality onto the state of stasis (‘frozen brains and perfect internal temperatures’) aligns them with Alecto, and the two of course work in tandem to signpost a CSA-type reading reminiscent of Lolita. U— and T—, once made into Ulysses and Titania, become the totalised subject of John’s control to which we can refer back when thinking about Alecto and Kiriona; through the imposition of the new name(s) and the dead-undead state of the bodies, we can see the immediate parallels, and we can also see how Alecto and Kiriona are each placed in a position relative to John functionally equivalent to the reanimated corpses under his control.

(An earlier example of this might be the three-way placing of Gideon, Loveday, and the puppeted Protesilaus alongside one another as—essentially—Cytherea’s three cavaliers. The killing of Protesilaus and puppeting of his corpse is discursively equivalent to the killing and consuming and reconstitution-through-batterisation of Loveday, and both are equivalent to the sexual subjugation of Gideon. Like, three different articulations of the same core subject position, to be sexually subjugated is to be killed/eaten/reconstituted by the means and abilities of the instigator. The kind of interpretive work we do to make sense of that is the same as the kind I’m trying to do with Alecto/Kiriona/U— and T—.)

The point is, the metaphorical work done here pits Alecto and Kiriona’s respective relationships to John as discursively the same. Already you can probably see the outline I’m drawing; that the incest reading comes through this suggestion that the relationship between John and Alecto (romantic, sexual at least at the metaphorical and possibly at the literal level) can be rendered equivalent to the relationship between John and Kiriona (that of kinship).

Alecto and Kiriona are also both paragons of cavalierhood; Alecto is one half of the blueprint from which the social formation emerged, and the driving force of Gideon is process of Gideon ‘learning’ and internalising the subject position of cavalierhood to such a severe extent that she becomes capable of killing herself by the end. Crucial to this paragon state is the fact that Alecto and Kiriona are more than just ‘dead,’ but undead; resurrected on the terms of a third party (ie. John!) in a manner that the Lolita posts outline in more depth. Their various interlocking and changeable subjectivities can be thought of under the encompassing umbrella of cavalierhood.

Crucially, Alecto and Kiriona are not distinct; it’s not enough to flatten this into a reading which claims that Alecto represents the ‘sexual’ subjectivity of cavalierhood and Kiriona represents the familial subjectivity. These categories collide at crucial points, and it’s from these collisions that the incest reading emerges. Alecto, in her ‘creation,’ can be read as effectively becoming John’s ‘daughter’ inasmuch as she is created by and grows out of him, constituted in his image; this reading is then further bolstered by this passage in Nona:

John loved her. She was John’s cavalier. She loved John. For she so loved the world that she had given them John. For the world so loved John that she had been given. For John had so loved her that he had made her she. For John had loved the world.

This passage is an ironic echo of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” In positioning Alecto as the ‘Son’ of that passage, we of course can see how she again finds herself shifted into a kinship relation; it of course also aligns her with Kiriona as the ‘Son’ proper and the most elaborate Christ metaphor (though Alecto on her own is already a body lying in state behind an unrolled rock to whom her worshippers pray; she doesn’t need to be linked back to Kiriona to be one of the several Christ-equivalents that Muir introduces).

As Alecto shifts between subject categories under the umbrella position of cavalierhood, so too does Kiriona in desiring to effectively defeat and overthrow Alecto and take her place as John’s cavalier. Setting aside the obvious (that Kiriona was, first, cavalier to Harrow, in what was/is a pretty clearly sexually charged homoerotic relationship, such that John coming to her as a Harrow stand-in is already making some incestuous gestures), Alecto’s relationship to John is—if we are to use the language of Annabel Lee and Lolita—that of being a ‘dead bride.’ We can, therefore, understand Kiriona’s desire to usurp Alecto as a metaphorical gesture towards the common ground between ‘bride’ and ‘daughter’ and the gateway by which the father’s daughter might desire to become the father’s bride.

Crucially—the slipperiness of ‘bride’ and ‘daughter’ hearkens back to the Lolita reading, by which we understand Alecto and Kiriona to occupy positions relative to John that can be strongly connected to the position Dolores Haze holds relative to Humbert Humbert. Humbert’s abuse of Dolores Haze becomes possible through his marrying her mother and thus gaining access to her as her stepfather; he leverages the position of what is effectively fatherhood in order to conceal his rape and abuse, keep her close to him and economically dependent on him, and rhetorically leverage the possibility of state intervention were his abuse of her to be discovered in order to keep her quiet. Fatherhood in Lolita is a sexual and a social violence and one of the clearest and most straightforward articulations of this idea of fatherhood-daughterhood as a patriarchal property relation extending into the realm of sexual abuse.

So what does this John/Kiriona incest reading do? If we refer back to the ideas I outlined at the very beginning of this essay, patriarchal incest can function as a metonym for normative articulations of the father’s power over the daughter and the violence that such a power embodies. In that reading, we’re often talking about the bourgeois father and the bourgeois daughter, seeking to preserve a concentrate of power through capital and regarding the daughter as, effectively, an asset. I think we can extrapolate a similar configuration from John as Emperor and Kiriona as Crown Prince, wherein she functions as his representative, an extension of his power, symbolically his heir (unlikely meaningful beyond this symbolism—I’m reminded of the part in AYU where Judith points out that John’s title being ‘King Undying’ renders functionally void the contracts which stipulate particular conditions on his death, lol—the point is that Kiriona extends his power beyond his own immediate space, much like how the empire is an extension of his power beyond his immediate space, much like how she becomes a weapon of his empire…etc); whatever relation exists between them, it exists in the context of a preservation and extension of John’s power. This necessarily renders Kiriona an extension of John, drawing on a discourse of familial control made possible through the idea of the child as an extension of the parent. The child as the extension of the parent (as the means by which the parent retains their control over the child) = the maintenance of the conditions of imperialism at the cost of the autonomy of the child, as we see through Kiriona’s being turned into effectively a weapon made out of her own dead body.

A lot of this, however, would be possible without the presence of incest. What I think the specifically incestuous dimension does is disrupt the extant distinction between a daughter and someone who is sexually available to the father, and places John’s ‘creation’ of Kiriona (as, if you will, distinct from Gideon; as reanimated on his terms, taking a name given by him, crafted into a weapon to fulfil his ends; you know) on a level with the creation of Alecto, and in so doing places it on a discursive level with rape. The creation of the daughter-bride-cavalier-etc as a meaningful subject position runs on the currency of sexual violence; to be a daughter or a bride under this configuration is to be articulated within a patriarchal order that exists within, and in servitude to, the interests of imperialism. Through the incest metaphor, we can see not only the reach of John’s control over Kiriona, but the way in which that control creates, feeds into, and fortifies other subjectivities, and lends explanatory power across the board. You could boil the metaphor down to just the statement that John incestuously raped Kiriona; whilst this did not literally happen in-text, the same as how Kiriona does not literally sexually desire her father and nor does he sexually desire her, the metaphor functions such that the violence of rape and the violence of what John did to Kiriona become equivocal. (I am thinking, as always, of that throwaway line in Nona where we learn that the twins’ equivalent of ‘Fuck, Marry, Kill’ is ‘Marry, Kill, Reanimate.’)

However, I think we can also consider the ways in which John and Kiriona intervene in (or at least develop) some of the assumptions baked into the traditional patriarchal incest configuration. As I said already, this configuration presupposes whiteness and heterosexuality, and a normative articulation of gender that tends to come part and parcel with both. Alecto is, in a sense, a force of hegemony to which John aspires (in short, an aspirational whiteness; also, I think, the kind of power that can be courted from her subjugation; part of the driving tension of Nona and indeed of portions of the rest of the series comes from this question of how, where and why disempowered people will seek empowerment within hegemony where they can get it). Alecto is white, and normatively feminine, by and large because she was formulated in the image of something which John coveted ie. a symbol of hegemony (and I think it’s significant that she hates the body she was put into, for reasons that could be attributed at least in part to gender or whiteness or both); whiteness and normative femininity are both categories from which Kiriona is excluded (even in a world where race + gender diegetically operate somewhat differently to how they operate in ‘our’ world, this still has explanatory significance), and this discourse of patriarchal incest and sexual violence similarly tends to exclude the ways in which people outside of the white, bourgeois household configuration are dragged into the mire of the violence it perpetuates. In incorporating Kiriona as a necessary counterpart to Alecto (and indeed, in figuring Gideon’s inculcation into cavalierhood as a predatory seduction by a white woman within which her masculinity was objectified), the myopia of the bourgeois house with the bourgeois relations whose violence appears wholly inward-facing is somewhat alleviated; it’s a far more expansive vision of what gendered violence is, what sexual violence is, where it takes place and why.

I don’t think the details of the John-Kiriona relationship are developed enough for me to confidently commit to a position on what eg. his renaming her with a te reo transliteration could be doing in regards to all of this, though I am v interested in this development towards an imperialism which still operates on an axis of Catholicism and antiquity but incorporates indigeneity; I do however think that Kiriona being brought into this circle of sexual violence as socially legible within it (as able to be subjugated by Cytherea and then Harrow and then John) kind of responds to the limitations that Alecto alone would place on the narrative; without this mitigation, there would be a unilateral focus on Alecto and the fantasy of whiteness + its preservation as the driving force behind all of this narrative development, whereas the incorporation of Kiriona (and, I imagine, Harrow, though as I said at the beginning I don’t think Harrow’s role here has been developed all that far just yet) allows us to map these interpretations out across a far broader range of gender expression and subjectivity.

To recap, because I’m well aware that this ran away with me somewhere and ended up absurdly long:

An analytical lens that considers the interpretive function of patriarchal (father/daughter) incest imagines the incest to metonymically reveal the violence baked into normative relations between fathers and daughters under patriarchy; the daughter as extended property of the father, including sexual property.

Cavalierhood can make discursive gestures towards different external relations at different points in the text. Significant ones include: butch/femme, marriage, gender, and kinship relations. All of these converge on the fact of the necromancer/cavalier relationship being an imperialist bolstering; its multitude of metaphorical functions all necessarily circle back to that common denominator.

Alecto and Kiriona are rendered discursively equivalent in relation to John; they both exist, under the ‘doll’ metaphor, under his control as semi-resurrected beings. They also both function as synecdoches of cavalierhood, making clear the subjectivity that the necromancer-cavalier relationship imposes.

Alecto and Kiriona operate within the categories of ‘daughter’ and ‘bride’ relative to John, but these categories are porous. They overlap such that, much like how John’s ‘creation’ of Alecto renders her functionally his daughter, Kiriona’s attempt to effectively coup Alecto and take her place renders her functionally John’s ‘bride.’ All of this takes place at the metaphorical level, but it opens us up to considering what the raised possibility of incest here can do.

What it can do is illustrate an understanding of Kiriona as a literal extension of John, allowing us to ask questions about the social order which understands the child as an extension of the will and power of the parent at the expense of their own autonomy. This is a social unit coherent within and endemic to imperialism. It also allows for a reading within which the daughter is sexually available to the father and the other readings around how Muir figures rape in the series can be brought to the fore; part of the maintenance of John’s control requires the (metaphorical) rape of Kiriona, much like how it required the (metaphorical) rape of Alecto by which the social ordering of the necromancer/cavalier relation was established.

We can also consider how gender and racialisation take this reading beyond the confines of the typical patriarchally incestuous text to think about how Alecto is only one piece of a far more expansive puzzle and Kiriona is another; the subjugation of an indigenous butch woman carries just as much significance irt hegemony and attached pathos as does the subjugation of Alecto, and both are presented not as totalising statements but as portions of a far broader discourse.

This is only tangentially related because obviously we're now talking subtext and speculation rather than actual textual content, but something that makes the possibility of Ianthe and Kiriona's weird little chussy entanglements so appealing to me is how each can manage to act as a proxy for about three people at once for the other; or to put it more clearly, as repositories for a displaced desire (however extracted or metaphorical) that cannot be directly realised and so has to undergo some kind of mimetic transformation. It's the displaced desire for Harrow, obviously, but also a displaced desire for Coronabeth, and a displaced desire for John. (It reminds me a lot of what Cytherea was doing with Gideon, wherein she couldn't oust John in any real sense because she held no meaningful power over him, but the site where she did hold power was the site where particular social structuring made it so that she was able to manipulate and seduce his daughter, who of course represented the absolute proof of very betrayal that she was turning against him for. Like, sex as a currency of power is a very recurrent theme here.)

Anyway—I hope this was helpful lmao!

[beatcroc]

1- GOD I LOVE YOUR ART SO MUCH

2- just a random question: do you plan on playing the BYOC mod (made by mcpig and the pizza tower discord community) or other stuff, or is it out of your interests?

3- some leaks shown that beside a noise spin off, we may also get a pizza tower update with playble mr stick and also a PIZZA TOWER 2- INVASION OF THE ALIENS (or smth likr it i forgot the title)

are you excited for it?

yaaaaa thank youuuuu :3

2. i'm not really much for modding in general, haha. isn't that one something for DOOM? i have no experience with doom either but maybe someday [dont count on it]; i feel like if you get into doom it's just natural to get into the goofy mods along with it

3. i do not care abt any of that 🔥🔥💯🔥💪🔥 when and if we get any official announcements for more projects direct from the tour de pizza team i'll look into it, but until then there's still plenty to chew through right now.

in my case, i'm far more interested in the game's past than its future; my actual ultimate hope for more More Content:tm: in pizza circles is them expanding the base game with stuff that got cut during development, since there was so much of it. the mansion? the heat meter? unused transformations? betas of these things literally exist and are still functional and playable; and with the structure of pizza tower being as loose as it is i wouldn't think it'd be hard to add a new floor, or just an extra level or two to existing floors. even just looking through sprite archives and seeing unused peppino attack animations im like man these don't look like they fit the current combat system but i'd fucking love to see them in the context of like a wrestling level or something

but anyway i realize this is kind of a pipe dream so in the meantime i just comb through debug mode to explore what there used to be and crash my game every 20 seconds :^) [space pinball cannot hide from me forever i WILL find a way through.... i haven't actually booted debug since the noise update though i hope all the old maps and shit are still there :x

there's also the old demos and builds to sniff out but i've been lazier about getting to those because frankly they all feel like ass compared to how the final game handles fjgfjkgfgf

if there WERE to be be a sequel to pizza tower or something else in its universe, i would definitely want a different cast; or at least a different protagonist. peppino's tale feels very neatly wrapped up and i really like his ending as-is.

[redstrewn]

As inspired by Musa's inclusion of the song "Hamlet" into their Leander playlist, I have Cliffsnotes-ed the play (because I never read/studied it before) and go on a whole unedited, completely disorganized, messy ramble about it in association with Leander. (More brainstorming than coherently presenting an essay lmfao.)

Advisory

Please bear in mind I haven't read the actual text and I'm just going off summaries off of literal Cliffsnotes. So if you want to scream at me for interpreting things the wrong way or just completely getting things wrong, be kind, but I welcome you to do so lol.

Originally this was going to be part of my response to Musa's ask linking their playlist, but this got pretty long so it's a separate post now.

Now onto the actual ramble

I'm cliffsnoting this and GAD DAYM this is wild. the blurring of deception and reality is really interesting and on topic. self-fulfilling prophecy but more like self-fulfilling....persona lol? self-fulfilling visage idk self-fulfilling mask!!! yes. self-fulfilling mask. growing into the mask for real.

Also the topic of justice/honor/societal values...making me think of Leander's appearance of caring for doing "better" than the Senobium. it kind of appears simplistic, when yeah it's pretty much a given the Bloodhounds are doing some dubious shit. "Doing good" becomes a complex, muddied thing. Is it a "the end justifies the means" kind of thing? Morals morals morals. Hero of lowtown. Such a seemingly shining beacon of hope. But as they say, the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. The hypocrisy of societal values and hamlet as a focus...I think abt Leander giving me hypocrisy vibes fr. Often comes from people who deem themselves perfect lmao. Narcissists especially. On brand. Plus I'm thinking because of the magician tarot, and his behavior in the demo, he's the "psychological horror" option on the uquiz: which plays into the internal conflicts kind of thing. Conflicting ideas within a person and the struggle over that. I already rambled about that on my faustus post so i'll save you from that again lmao.

Hamlet's recklessness is the result of realizing that the moral codes he once held to be of value are no longer applicable and, perhaps, broadly irrelevant.

Leander for real sooo seems to hold on to morals, which is funny because he's a monster all the same. Speaks so disapprovingly of the groupmind and the Senobium's cruelty (again the hypocrisy). He's canonically described as a ringleader, so it's interesting to see how far he slips from his first perceived moralities and further to darkness--and how far he tries to justify everything he does maybe. I don't know. Again, "end justifies the means." I keep thinking of that Ursula K. De Guin quote, "The end justifies the means, but what if there never is an end? All we have is means." Which like...lol quite relevant with Leander's themes of endlessness. "Mages lust for power, it's always their downfall." When does it end???? It ends only when his life does.

The political corruption in Denmark deeply affects Hamlet, and he develops an obsession with physical corruption, decay, and death.

As Hamlet works to uncover the “rotten” core of Denmark, he is shocked and dismayed by both the actual deaths he comes across and the figurative deaths he stumbles upon—like, for instance, the death of honor or decency. In this way, Shakespeare implies that physical degradation is indicative of broader forms of spiritual, political, and social decay.

HUUUUHHHHH......Talented mage son that was meant to attend the prestigious but messed up academy...leaves his cushy nest to pursue his own dreams. Dislikes said academy. Leads a group of "do-gooders" that have the same feelings. States he's better than that academy. Speaks like a stickler for morals. Decorated with symbols about the cycle of life and immortality. Hm. Yeah. Interesting and fun. I keep thinking about how he gives me the vibes that he's dying and desperate. I don't know if he's actually dying but I get the vibe he's running away from something, partying and working and not resting adequately as he does. There's a "decay" somewhere, I feel like. I mean, Vere fucking hates him and he can see into souls. Hates him enough that he's the one listed in Vere's dislikes instead of Kuras. What the fuck is going on with Leander, spiritually? ROFL.

This leads to one of the play’s most important moments of reflection on the inevitability of death and decay. Hamlet reflects on how all the things he knew of Yorick in life—his wit, warmth, and physical attributes—are gone forever.He realizes that this applies to all people, no matter how great or small. He is both saddened and comforted by the process of decay, inquiring of the gravediggers how long it takes for flesh to rot off of bones.

It took me reading this paragraph to realize Leander's dislike of Ais's groupmind can be because they're technically dead. I mean, if Ais's flowers and the seemingly "last letter" notes on the Seaspring pillars are anything to go by. It's like a grave. People speculate the uptick of Ais's flowers are associated with actual more deaths happening, whether from drinking from the Seaspring or generally due to the state of their world. Jeez.

Hamlet's fixation on death shows that he feels powerless to stop what is happening in Denmark.

It took me reading this sentence to see how Leander's lust for power can be attributed to the final, insurmountable fact that is death. I mean yeah, I got the fact that he was power hungry to get to godhood and seems to be allergic to death, but my dumb ass didn't really like. Connect that the lust for power is directly specifically because of death and not just like....wanting power for the sake of doing good for all. But then again, maybe overcoming death has something to do with his idea of doing good. I don't fucking know. How much is his "do-good" is sincere and how much of it is just a front to his hidden selfish agenda? Is he even conscious of his hidden selfish agenda? Or has he near-completely deluded even himself and not just other people that he has completely pure and righteous nature?

After all this I don't have a good conclusion paragraph. I'm just stewing shit in my mind. It's good food. Thank you. I may have stretched shit completely irrelevant to Leander and still made it about him anyway, but that's my hobby babeeyyyyy. Feel free to drop some thoughts. I'd be surprised if anyone actually reads this brainvomit lmao

[catty-words]

I’ve been seeing ur blog for a while and i love how you talk abt devi’s agency and how important it is which is why some of the reactions to devi going to ben at the end of s3 annoys me. i keep seeing “imagine ur first time being w ben when you had paxton and des” yeah, they’re pretty but this isn’t about trying to self insert into devi which unfortunately i feel is the case for most (not all) daxton shippers. it’s like they just want the steamy scenes because darren is hot and that’s it.

devi wasn’t ready to have sex w paxton or des. for pax it was because she thought it needed to happen so he could continue dating her. she bailed the moment it got too close multiple times. with des, she was overthinking it and preparing everything meticulously. so i actually really like the fact that devi going to bens and gives her that ridiculous free boink voucher and they don’t even have to say anything feels very inevitable. devi has a lot of agency making that choice and i love that she goes “yeah i want to have sex” and just goes there without any doubt. without overthinking her looks or if the mood is right. ben makes her feel comfortable and herself. so he makes sense as her first time. we don’t know if it happens i guess we’ll find out but the fact is she made the choice of involving ben in the new part of her evolving dream. i believe maitreyi said something similar about liking how team devi it is.

so here's the thing. i agree with the fundamental argument you're making - ben has always represented accountability-to-self in the triangle so it's very thematically rich that he be the love interest devi goes to for her first time - but i don't care for the way you talk about people who would have preferred a different ship outcome in order to make your point. makes this ask kind of a bummer to read, if i'm being honest, because i like paxton and i cared about the devi/des chapter of devi's development. like, read the room.

also, i don't even agree that devi was overthinking things with des. the whole point of them was that she was freed from her identity-related anxieties because he didn't know sherman oaks dork devi and she was totally ready to round one base or another with him by the end of 3.08. circumstance stopped them from getting it on, not any absence of readiness.

[hospitalterrorizer]

diary185

3/18-19/2024

monday - tuesday

annoyed about work tomorrow.

but what can i do... nothing, and i need to stay up to let my gf into the apartment as she returns home, which is exciting.

she is home now, i think i'll go early now, i am really tired, and stuff, i need to wkae up at 6 am-ish.

i had some thoughts today, some of them about formulating a better kind of critique of ai, a lot of what i see does end up either oddly focusing on valuing 'humanity' in a way i disagree with, given what its origins and goals are, as a construction. i feel that re: the monologic nature of it that i talk abt and how it seeks to develop meaning/what it repeats and weighs and so on, sep. in language generation and stuff, or even i guess what its 'imaginary' would constitute or whatever, whether it has that capacity 'actually' or not, but it is really just reinforcing what human is/could/should be, and so even if we are mechanized further by being asked to behave more like these processes which, we are still only at the point where automation is a maybe in many fields, we see that this might really only correspond to an increase in our aptitude/force in labor, and also, given the transparency of these functions, it would be a greater limit and increase dominance. beyond those functions, as well, it de-limits surveillance, in certain respects.

another set of thoughts i had were about precarity, being so baked into every level of society, everyone presenting a risk and presented with risks, sacrifices for efficiency, that kind of thing, but it's blurry now. hopefully what i put there gets something across, i guess maybe more of an image of a critique of the stuff i see is coming to light for me, it feels necessary, as a lot of the negativity towards ai does not satisfy me, i think i am touching on at least why i dislike it, and why i dislike its presence / the way techno-optimists try to phrase it, as it seems like it might really only be a technology derived from specific assumptions, to service a particular standard of humanism, it is maybe not even an automating function as much as people would like to think, and more of a custodian, in this sense it is going to order thoughts/potentialities in subtler ways, which would perhaps make it more powerful than if it truly and solely were meant to replace.

the other level of critique that frustrates me is stuff that does amount to quibbling over copyright, i don't think people should really steal work and claim it is theirs, at the same rate, thievery and laws/arguments against it typically just attack people who are perceived as 'criminal' in some strange way. i don't know if people generating ai art are really anything other than fairly dim and annoying. it has to be a critique of a futurism, when taking them to task, of their methods and what they mean, the methods as the work is utterly meaningless, intentionally, most of the time.

but it is the first critique i outline here that is more interesting. i think the points re precarity are returning a bit, it is primarily though derived from the cybernetic hypothesis' notion of risky dividuals and capital asking them to take on that risk, still hard to find the words to link it in full to these thoughts but it is maybe more about labor forces broadly, that kind of thing, i dunno.

i am tired, i recorded 3 songs today, i kind of knocked a bunch out, it feels like. so anyway

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ptsd-and-trauma-confessions]

Hey, im doing okay and im safe. I hope you are too! I do want to get something off my chest, and this seems to be the place. Tw for (domestic) violence and some consensual kink related talk vague context: I live with a friend who's working through a lot of trauma. He's getting better at his anger management skills, but sometimes things get out of control. When things do go wrong he gets violent and i get defensive, bc i just cant fight a friend. Thats not a moral judgement on my friend, btw. I get what triggers him and i get what led him to develop different coping mechanisms from me. And i know abt the work he's putting in to find less violent ways of coping/reacting. On top of that, it isnt morally superior of me not to fight back lol. I just freeze bc of the unhealthy guilt over contributing to the conflict. Anyway confession time: i hate how good it feels. I'll be trying to de-escalate the conflict for as long as possible, but as soon as i take a hit there's this feeling of bliss giving of a warm glow in my stomach. It used to take me by surprise. I mean i've always kinky, but pain occurs within a very different context than a disagreement or misunderstanding that got out of hand. I'd get confident and malicious and start taunting, literally showing the other cheek, lowering all my defenses, asking to get hit again out of some misplaced selfhatred and the false idea that my friend would actually feel better after beating the shit out of me even more.... After talking things out and realising that maybe that wasnt helping anyone i cut that kind of taunting out. But fucking hell... after a very long period without violence we just had fight. I only took a couple of hits, but each one gave me that same feeling of bliss and i genuinely felt a little sad that the fight was so (relatively) tame. Now i keep thinking about it, and even though i hate that the fight happened, part of me just wants to focus on how good those hits felt. UUUUUGGGGHHHH im just frustrated. bodies react differently to all kinds of stimulation, its fine that mine (bc of learning experiences interacting with biological differences i guess) just so happens to like hard impacts and choking. That doesnt mean i was looking for a fight or. Pfff some consensual kink, on my terms, sounds like it would hit the spot rn. Fucking shame im too busy with exams

.

[whatthefuckisasweep]

season 4 spoilers for wwdits but i really love the direction the writers are going for nandor and guillermo, and I can kinda see their thought process maybe (knowing we have 2 seasons coming up)… AN ESSAY

Firstly, I dont think nandor and guillermo are gonna end up together at the end of this season. i think guillermo is going to be genuinely happy with freddie in some capacity! and he kind of needs it!

in terms of character guillermo starts out timid, in a clear power dynamic, with very little self respect. hes subservient and softspoken, and weve seen him become more unhinged, which is amazing. he complains a lot more. and theres still this level of subservience, but only at his own benefit. he doesnt fucking care abt their feelings anymore because they never cared abt his. finally, we see guillermo being selfish loudly. and what does that get him? during this season, he has so far seen 3 people after his affections. the guide. nandor, as his best man. and freddie, his boyfriend. also his family, if you want to count that. guillermo needs, as a character, to feel wanted, because he has never felt that way. now that hes wanted more than ever, he’s probably gonna overdo it and its gotta come crashing down so it can level out. i love how hes already BICKERING with nandor and nandor’s TAKING it.

in other words, he’s gotta gain a little respect and get drunk on it, then learn how to stabilize in the middle… with maybe some help. Only then can he balance love, family, and himself: when he understands what hes worth, and that he doesnt need constant validation to know someone cares. I think that also boils back to his desire to be a vampire, to be someone else, to be cool and wanted. i think he is slowly realizing and learning he doesnt want to be anybody else by guillermo de la cruz, human vampire slayer. thats his arc. The next two seasons might deal with him going too far with this ‘new’ guillermo, and then realizing too late that hes hurt people he cares about, and the guillermo de la cruz he really is would help his found family. I predict that the Nandor and Guillermo dolls he made might remind him. :)) I dont really got a clue what happens to freddie. havent seen enough of him to gauge if he might stick around… if guillermo genuinely got over nandor i think thats honestly great for his char! but might change at any moment considering the show has 2 seasons more at least!!

nandor on the other hand… ough. his search for love is honestly so perfect, and i love how they are setting it up with the djinn and marwa and guillermo. nandor being nice to guillermo is amazing. hes starting to give guillermo respect and not even laughing along with the others as much. this already is huge char development. but like, really think about it: laszlo & nadja… now Guillermo and Freddie. Nandor is gonna feel like everyone has someone but him more than usual. Hes gonna wonder why he doesnt feel the same way everyone else feels even with a wife. it makes life even more meaningless. I mean, first guillermo abandons him, he cant be human, now he cant even be happy with a wife? So whats wrong with him? What does he need? Hes gonna wish everything he could ever want into existence… but still feel like a shell. Being nandor, he exhausts all options before facing the truth… and It forces Nandor to understand hes under appreciating things in life that make it better or meaningful (guillermo lol). Thats his arc. And not only that, but hes beginning to show more emotions. I feel like as the season goes on, he might reveal that hes really hurt by guillermo “leaving”. i think it might end with him realizing he has messed up with their relationship and that he might… have feelings for him that hes repressing. (maybe therapist laszlo helps?) he might see/hear some of guillermo’s personal and home life and realize he knows nothing abt him and feel… regret? And i think its needed to get him to find that life has meaning: to make others you love happy, is to make yourself happy.

The wedding might be his wedding — but if its Guillermo and Freddie, he might realize he feels… jealous. He might realize also that he has to let it happen for Guillermo to be happy, and FINALLY, FINALLY THEN, we can see Nandor doing something COMPLETELY SELFLESS for someone else. To a MAJOR disadvantage for him. Thats what his character NEEDS. Maybe that wont happen, but I sense thats what they are coming to: that hes gotta be selfless. Might have something to do with the djinn and guillermo too?

That means i kind of predict that s5 will be sort of nandor’s pining while guillermo kinda goes off on his own and becomes kind of a real asshole. its a role reversal situation. might go too far and then s6 is kind of this recovery where they both realize they dont wanna be anyone else but themselves together, and retain the best traits of both assholiness and sweetness. Together. Possibly in a relationship. Possibly not? But honestly as long as they go through these beats as characters and grow, Im gonna be happy. Especially for Guillermo if he sticks with freddie, because getting OVER nandor is actually such a powerful statement for his char tbh.

ALSO GONNA THROW IN ANOTHER RANDOM PREDICTION: big blow out fight between them <3

Thats all. Super long but THOUGHTS ALL STORED IN BRAIN AND NEED TO GET THEM OUT. I might be so fucking wrong but-

[reggiepeters-love-bot]

apparently all i do now is tell yall my thoughts on whatever i recently watched instead of trying to come up with good content. anyway, i finished nhie s3 today, so:

- ive never been team benvi, but i dont feel super mad abt it as much as i wouldve a few years ago

- paxton my boy ily, amazing character development 

- i wish daxton dated for longer. i feel like there was too much buildup to them being an official couple for them to break up so soon

- i didnt like the timeskip. ik in some way it was necessary but also ive just always hated random time skips

- i love aneesa, just like everyone else on here i wish she got more screentime. glad she dumped ben and didnt take any of his disrespect

- fabneesa,,,, why did that happen if they were gonna throw it away so quickly. it had potential and coulda been a good storyline for both fab and aneesas characters but it literally did nothing

- also w fab,, even though she had a good amount of screentime i feel like there wasnt enough storyline from her. like when she was dating eve we had her whole thing about struggling with still not fitting in even in a queer group and feeling like she had to not be herself. this season, all of her plot points were so rushed. between eve being written out in the first five minutes to literally n o n e of her relationship with addison being shown, fab as her own individual character felt kinda forgotten about. and then her just randomly telling devi and el about losing her virginity when a) el got her own lil storyline for that and then b) as dumb as it may sound, losing their virginities was kinda a big deal for those three and to have it brushed off for one of them feels weird

- trent and eleanor r everything to me. i love them dearly

- character growth from all the vishwakumars>>  wont waste time on devi bc whatever everyone else has said i agree. but nalini not being so strict with devi and their relationship being stronger and healthier is so nice to see. proud of kamala for moving out and for also not just doing whatever her family wanted her to do. and then nirmala coming around and being understanding of kamala after hearing her out. all of it is so good

- i honestly liked des and devi together. they had good chemistry and devi was also in a place where she could be more confident in herself. obv he sucked for not defending devi to his mom but im not too torn up over them breaking up, especially since it furthered devis development

- the way that rhyahs behavior started out as small things to kind of hint at the kind of person she was before the final straw of what she said about devi was rly interesting and i appreciated it from a storytelling standpoint, esp bc nalini was wary of it every time

- glad ben is a better person now. still not my fav

- someone pointed out that the ben and margot thing was put aside in order for there to be drama next season, but i didn’t like that it was just completely forgotten about. like, they agreed to a date and then it was never mentioned again,, like, not even in passing

- eleanor and paxton besties, love to see it

- also trent being sad about paxton leaving was so cute i love him. and him giving paxton his hat,,, monumental

- trents love language in general i love. when el was at dinner with him and he said “not even weed makes me this happy” was freaking everything and i love that eleanor understood how much that meant

- while the show had a lot of strong moments and the best character development of all the seasons, i feel there were also plenty of things that moved too quickly and didnt get enough time and werent explored enough

thats all. take a shot for every use of “character development”

[un-pearable]

okay season 5 lets GOOOO: gonna take a minute to talk plot here. a few minutes actually my apologies i have come into your askbox swinging.

i feel like the season definitely couldve been streamlined in some aspects and i do wish they had done some things differently so bear with me for a second while i try to put things into words. so the way the season kicks off, it seems like they're going to be trying to explore kai & lloyd's relationship given kai's "ill watch over you" and how he tries to slot back into the de facto leader position after lloyd is gone, but they kind of lose that as the season progresses, which is annoying because the pieces are there!

like. morro is simultaneously foils for both lloyd and kai. last season, kai's "im gonna be the green ninja !!!!!!" gets brought up again by both chen and lloyd and also further brought up by lloyd that kai still… hasnt really gotten over himself, but it doesnt really get properly followed up either then or now. he's still subconsciously prioritizing gaining glory for himself as opposed to prioritizing what needs to get done, even if it means that he's not the one to do it.

this carries further again back into the beginning of the arc after lloyd is gone and kai keeps trying to be the leader, even if he repeatedly has no idea what he's doing. its about his glory, not about who would make the best leader (zane its zane the only reason zane leading didnt work out was because the writers knew it would be too powerful), and again is relevant to the arc because kai does this to try and fill the void in the team that lloyd left. its about the two of them.

given morro's existence as somebody who started off as "im gonna be the green ninja !!!!!!!!" and then never got over it, you'd think that we wouldve gotten a fight between him and kai where we circle back to the things brought up last season by lloyd (which works out really nicely as morro is connected to both of them by nature of being narrative foils) and we get a nice tidy wrap up in a battle of ideologies.

ok consider, for a moment: kai wants to be the one to take the glory and beat the snot out of the giant hairy eyeball, and then at some point realizes that lloyd is the one who has to beat it. unfortunately for him, lloyd is in the middle of a deathmatch with morro, so kai steps in to take morro on, making good on his promise to look out for lloyd, so that lloyd can go fulfill his destiny or whatever and save ninjago. as a result, kai steps away from his ego and the moment of glory he's always wanted bc he's realized that there are more important things to deal with, and then we get a fight dialogue abt how kai also thought he was going to be the green ninja and morro is like "why dont you resent lloyd too?!" and kai responds that he got over himself and his massive ego because !! character development !!!!! and the reason this fight is happening at all being because kai has finally let go of his need for glory & because morro never did and AUGH IT COULDVE WORKED OUT SO WELL

going back to lloyd i really dont understand why he wasnt the one to kill the preeminent - esp given his conversation with garmadon about how lloyd needs to grow up one day & how lloyd has his robe now symbolizing him taking on his dad's mantle, it wouldve made wayyyy more sense to have him be the one to finish the job and put his father to rest. yknow. like do i want to subject lloyd to round three of killing his dad? no ofc not but also. thematically yes absolutely

so then, the question becomes, if lloyd is the one to nuke the preeminent… where does that leave nya? and my answer to that is: she shouldve gotten a separate arc, frankly. this arc shouldve been about lloyd & kai's relationship, but in the canon arc nya is kind of just shoehorned in there to the detriment of pretty much everybody, including herself. she's got no narrative or thematic connection to the preeminent, shes not really relevant to the arc outside of the final battle, and she honestly deserved better.

OKAY PLOT STUFF ASIDE my brain has finally started turning on and the thought gears are cranking and i am beginning to form Opinions, which is great for me because i love having opinions. umm okay this is the other arc i am very familiar with and i had a ton of fun. it was very enjoyable. i got my terrible alt outfits and i am THRIVING

maybe one day the ninjago writers will have a season that doesnt nerf lloyd for the entire thing except the last three episodes. probably not but a girl can dream. whoever concepted the giant hairy eyeball and got it approved on a show whose target demographic is children is deranged and i love it. absolute madlad. godspeed for making something so horrifying.

i also find it VERY funny that morro's whole thing is "i am going to become the GREEN NINJA" like it even matters anymore. like bestie idk how to tell you this but that ship has sailed. the prophecy has been completed. functionally the green ninja title has no more meaning than the brown ninja.

also i cant believe cole is just . a ghost now. hes just like that i guess. i know we'll have to sort it out eventually but this is honestly a very funny status quo change.

ok i think thats aboutt it but yes i did really enjoy this season despite what my long diatribe above would have you believe. it was fun it was cool and i am very ready to head into the rest that this show has to offer.

also . btw if you dont want me to send u these things just tell me and i will stop w/ no hard feelings. personally i love people liveblogging things i like to me but i only belatedly realized this may not be universal so i am very sorry if its not 😔

yeahhhh season 5, while it has some banger concepts and The visually traumatic villain all good children's media has in their back pocket, is definitely where you can see the trend of incredibly good ideas with lackluster execution peaking... its still a really good and enjoyable show!!! but

anyway this is canon to me now i will be rolling it around in my head like a marble covered in paint. like those projects you do in elementary school art class or whatever. ooooh character parallels characters who are mirrors characters who are you but ___ but in EVERY possible direction between kai lloyd and morro.... fuck love triangles i need the threeway mirror. you are also Extremely correct that nya deserved her own thing + being more centered. water is fuckin cool as hell can't believe they flopped.

terrible alt outfits are requisite alongside overly grotesque villain design and im so glad you feel they delivered akdsjfds. the only scene i actually remember of this part is where jay, ever the out of touch accidental asshole, yells out "lloyd!! what's wrong with you!??" when morro shows up in his body but damn do i love it. this and cole on the bus when they're teachers,,, they're so stupid. they're canonically like 16. stop giving them jobs. keep doing it its perfect.

the prophecy nonsense getting dragged on for so long is so so frustrating but incredibly funny... what it means to be the green ninja changes every five seconds and honestly lloyd deserves it. just fuckin lie about what your powers are man. manipulate your friend group that being protectors means they gotta do x y and z. lloyd deserves his childhood shittiness back and all the others forgetting he was a petty little punk need to be reminded askdjfkfdsf

the fact!!! that cole just stays a ghost!!! fuckin wild. I never actually saw that get resolved when I was watching as a kid so for a solid decade he was just a ghost in my head. obsessed with the implications of him becoming human again but infinitely funny that unlike reasonable shows. dude just stayed dead after the finale. hi this is ninjago our stakes are REAL and our consequences LASTING. we promise. we made the earth guy incorporeal. he's chill about it now he thinks its cool.

edit: okay hey wait. does morro even know pixal exists. this is completely unimportant but i can’t stop thinking about it. shes still in zane’s head so i’d assume no but??? he does have lloyd’s memories??? does he even acknowledge her??? hm.

[thisisamerlinonlyevent]

today im thinking about immortal merlin n leon, alive to see camelot fall n kingdoms rise above it, the tragedy, the angst, the grief. i didn’t ship leon n merlin at all until i started to think abt them living through the centuries with only each other. that’s a different kind of intimacy right there. like i can’t rly define their relationship, i wouldn’t call them lovers but definitely not friends. like they’re intimate like lovers but care for each other like ride or die friends n it’s very complicated n surprisingly i think that leon was the one to go “you know what? let’s not label anything. let’s vibe. we care n love each other how we do, if others don’t, well... they’re not us so it’s not like it matters in the end” n merlin’s like “so true king, wanna suck my dick about it later or just gently makeout over the fire about it?” “we’ll see what we feel like doing later :)” “okay cool nice :)”.

IM NOT DONE! now think. something happens alright, there’s a stutter in reality and, for some reason, morgana n mordred come back, albeit very differently. morgana is your classic “i came back n im pissed abt it, and i still hate you even tho there’s no point about it and truly i don’t even mean it, you want me to be honest i don’t know who i really am or why i did anything but im too prideful to admit that out loud so I’ll have a huge mental breakdown over it later”, while mordred is actually broken. doesn’t eat not speak, drinks water only when it’s shoved down his throat, looks on the verge of tears 24/7 n all in all, as much as leon and merlin want to hate him for ruining everything, they have to admit something is so wrong with him they just. let the whole issue be for now.

then merlin has an epiphany after morgana’s like. third mental breakdown n weird character development that smth happened to her before death to make her like this, he does a think for a while, leon does a think with him as well, mordred does nothing but be void of everything, n they come to the conclusion “oh shit morgana was cursed, it was probably that bitch morgause even tho her past was also kinda shitty, still not an excuse, anyways let’s do the whole white (?) goddess thing” that thing they did when merlin turned into a hag for evil gwen. it’s kinda different, since it’s been more than a thousand years since merlin has done that, but they chuck em both there (morgana n mordred, with their consent ofc this is how this works, n yes they just kinda took a nod from mordred as answer enough) and they hoped for the best.

SO post de-cursing ritual shit, morgana n mordred kinda switch roles. mordred remembering everything n being emo about it cause, sue him he’s been dead for centuries he’s lost touch with his emotions. morgana is now in shock (oh how nice haha) so she’s the quiet one just. slowly taking all the shit she did in. leon n merlin are tired but tbh this is the most interesting thing that has happened in a while so they’re not too upset over it. now cue centuries of weird bonding, communication, character n emotional development, found family tropes, some self sacrificing while at the same times forgetting they’re all immortal so they come back always but damn that shit is still traumatizing, n you have another 1000 years alive n kicking in this world (in my personal hcs the show was around the 6th century even if it doesnt make sense theres magic ffs shut up so this would make them be alive during the 26th century whoray).

this is when arthur, the knight, gwen n gaius cause i love him, decide to wake up n chaos ensues (n the reunion is not as sweet as you think, 2000 years have passed and things have changed, for the better or for the worse)

this is entirely self indulgent btw but whenever i think abt these 4 i think abt them like THIS always so. yh i love this chaotic family

[queenie-the-writer]

heartstopper: a rant

don’t get me wrong i f*cking love heartstopper but i found some things problematic, specifically in the show and i need an outlet so here we are (don’t come @ me or i’ll come @ you *respectfully*)

ok. so. i read the heartstopper books 1-4 in two days and binged the show the second day. therefore, i got a pretty direct comparison between the two and found that a lot of the things that were handled beautifully in the books weren’t done so well in the show.

keep in mind, ofc i wasn’t expecting the books and the show to be perfectly the same bc ik that’s simply not possible. no hate to anyone who loves the show, don’t get me wrong i did too!!! i just feel like it’s important to point these things out bc some of them are just not ok.

1. SHOW NICK VS BOOK NICK

I. LITERALLY. LOVE. NICK.

i relate so much to his character and he is such a sweetheart. but to me, show nick came no where near as good as book nick. let me explain.

let’s start with book nick. he was always so nice and respectful to everyone, and wasn’t afraid to stand up for what is right. we can see some of these same qualities in show nick, although book nick didn’t care as much abt being seen with charlie.

there’s this one scene that i always come back to when making a comparison between these two versions of him. remember the scene in volume 2 when they’re at a rugby practice and charlie gets passed the ball(?) and then tackled? some of the dialogue is “sorry, charlie” and “i forgot you were so light” as charlie is dazed on the ground. next thing you know, nick is shoving past everyone and yelling “CHARLIE!”, then proceeds to help charlie up and away like they’re the only two people there. he also stays and helps tend to his injury.

this all happens a little bit differently in the show. ep 4, rugby against the buff team which quickly turns into rugby against the buff team in the pouring rain. also in front of a bunch of kids from school, including charlie’s friends. at one point, the dude with the ball(?) is running for the end zone(?) (sports lingo amirite) and charlie’s there and ofc now’s the perfect time to decide to tackle him but instead charlie basically gets punched and falls down. everything just kinda like stops and nick is just standing there like ten feet away from charlie on the ground for a solid five minutes as everyone starts leaving and what does he do? absolutely nothing. nick just watches as ppl help charlie up and away and i think you see my point right?

then show nick has the audacity to say he’ll go out with a girl he doesn’t even like in front of a crowd of kids from school. like, no no no sir.

anyways. book nick >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> show nick

2. CHARLIE IS HISPANIC, RIGHT?

i guess not in the show bc he’s kinda super white. not that joe locke didn’t do a terrific job with the role, but just a missed mark by the casting since i feel like that’s an important part of the diversity and rep of the series.

3. TARA AND DARCY’S PLOTLINE

imo, a big part of nick’s character development is because of these ladies and their experience with coming out, which was lost in the show since they were also still figuring it out. it also felt kind of unnecessary to change it so much in the show, but oh well.

omg but the shot of them dancing at the party with the lights >>>>>

4. ELLE OUTING CHARLIE AND NICK

this is my biggest point and the one i found the MOST problematic in this whole thing.

when someone decides to trust you with their sexuality and / or the privacy of their relationship, one of the most important rules to follow is DONT TELL ANYONE. it’s not your responsibility to tell others. everyone’s journey is different and it’s up to them how and when they want to tell specific ppl, even if they’re also a part of your life. ITS NOT YOUR JOB. it’s a huge crossing of boundaries and grossly disrespectful.

this wasn’t an issue in the books, which makes me wonder why on earth they did what they did in the show.

i believe it’s in the third book that charlie decides to finally tell tao about his and nick’s relationship. though tao is the last one to know, it was still charlie who initiated the conversation bc he was finally ready to trust tao again.

in the show, nick and charlie tell elle when they’re out on a triple date with tara and darcy while tao is away from the table. so now tao is the only one who doesn’t know and when he shares his suspicions with elle about nick and charlie, SHE DOESNT DO ANYTHING. doesn’t deny anything, doesn’t even try to switch the subject. she doesn’t do anything to protect nick and charlie’s privacy and that’s what gets me so worked up.

again, don’t get me wrong—i loved the experience of reading and watching heartstopper. i just thought bringing the things i noticed to light was important bc some of the things represented in the show are just not okay. imo, the books are 110% better than the show and i highly recommend reading and also watching the show. it’s a great easy queer read with lots of amazing rep!!!

[bourbon-ontherocks]

Okay, all i can think abt is how morgane felt the entire season alone dealing with her problems without reaching for any help. She swallowed a lot of crap during S2 (ex. her house being evicted , her ex-husband leaving her twice, her dysfunctional family, her friends who felt betrayed by her, her own kids turning their backs on her and her blatant jealousy towards roxane). She was surrounded by the people she loves but she actually never felt LOVED by them. Or at least that's what she thinks of herself: she feels she doesn't deserve to be loved. This all leads us to the "who could love me?" line. Morgane has experienced loneliness before (ex. her weird relationship with her mother brought her to grow up faster than any young adult) but now that she actually has someone around her she WANTS to be loved, as she should. But she doesn't know how. We can tell that the few times where she was truly happy was with karadec (ex. the freaking dance scene) and him being the only one to give her a shelter speaks volume. She needed a friend more than a lover this season and i think morgane has finally find both. His answer in 208 is what morgane wanted to hear and his true feelings for her showed afterwards with the kiss. They could be a thing if they want to, but in order to do so morgane has to deal with her shit and try to love herself a lil bit more. Because she deserves to be happy (with herself and with karadec too 👀).

Heeeyy!! ❤️❤️

Again, so sorry for taking literal ages to respond to this, I have been incredibly busy lately but I couldn’t wait to dive into this...

Okay so first of all these are topics that I feel I’ve abundantly rambled about in the HPI anon thread (here, or here), and now that I think about it, perhaps you would be interested in browsing through the entire Julia's adventures with the HPI anon tag on my blog as I’ve discussed raved about most of my views on this season in these posts (if you’re on mobile, the link won’t work but I think all you have to do is search for the exact same tag in the search bar on my blog page? Or you could directly search for the #hpi analysis tag on tumblr which is where I store most of my ramblings... Idk tumblr is weird sometimes), ANYHOW, the short answer to this ask is yes, yes, YES to all of this!!!!!

For perhaps the first time in her life, Morgane’s got a support system and friends, although she still needs to realize it. You’re right, she does love the team but she doesn’t feel loved by them although they keep showing her that they do: helping with redoing her house, inviting her to dance, hosting her at their respective places, fighting for her when Roxane threatens her job... I mean, Daphné excepted, every action of Morgane’s colleagues screams “we love you and we care about you”, if only she could see it that way...

“She needed a friend more than a lover this season” The way this speaks SO MUCH to my heart, yes, for fuck’s sake YES she needs a friend so bad, and just -- uuuuughhh!!! 😭😭😭

I wouldn’t say that Karadec is the only answer to that, though. Sure, he’s become the person in the team who’s the closest to her and who knows her best (and I’m not talking about the kiss here but rather the time they spent together, the sort of intimacy they developed, the things she told him in the pre-kiss scene, and I personnally can’t stop thinking about the fact that she probably disclosed the least information she could to the others re Romain and her own internal meltdown, de facto making Karadec the only witness of her vulnerability 😱😱), but also I think that she needs a frienship outside of a romantic interest, so I would love to see her develop a closer relationship to Céline or Gilles, because the fact that she’s currently in love with Karadec might affect the benefit of his friendship (something something unbalance and unhealthy codependance).

[1dfangirls35]

The Language of Your Soul

An enemies to lovers Ballet AU in 5 Acts

Masterlist

Act I

A/N:

First of all, thank you so much to @booksncoffee for the absolutely gorgeous banner!

I am so excited to share this story with you all! Inspired in part by a night rewatching Center Stage on Netflix and from years of ballet classes, I hope this AU brings a new twist on Harry fics (and maybe even helps you gain a new appreciation for the world of ballet). Please note, while I have used my own 10+ years of classical ballet training in addition to research on this topic to hopefully make this as realistic as possible, this is still a work of fiction- and some details may have been changed to better fit the constraints of the story. The companies mentioned in this fic are real, however this story and its characters are entirely works of fiction. On a more personal note, while I have chosen to publish this story now and believe I will be able to maintain weekly updates to its entirety, I am preparing to take my boards in less than four weeks. Should I not update as scheduled- please be patient and know that an update is only a few weeks away! :) Thank you so much for reading!

Warnings: This story will contain language, mentions of emotional abuse from a parent and eating disorders. Please read at your own discretion.

Ten Weeks to Opening Night

Albert Einstein once said, "dancers are the athletes of God." Giselle Mason certainly doesn't feel like pne of God's athletes at the moment. Not with the way her muscles are screaming with every movement that she makes as she stretches before class, not with the way her right hip cracks as she lifts her leg onto the bar, and certainly not with the way her feet sting as she tapes up yet another blister on her toe before shoving her foot into her pointe shoes for another day full of torture.

Giselle stands, sticking one last bobby pin into the bun of her nearly ebony hair and finding her spot at the front of the barre in the center of the studio. She grasps the wooden cylinder with her left hand before releasing her body in a forward bend, taking a deep breath in and then a deep breath out. There is a familiar ache in her hamstrings as she begins to stretch, which loosens ever so slightly with every breath.

And so begins her daily morning routine in the studio. Fifteen minutes of stretching before company class begins. Relaxing each hamstring, hip flexor and spinal muscle until a sense of calm washes over her body. Letting her mind drift into a thoughtless focus, preparing itself for the waves of choreography that would be coming in minutes. Typically, this time is quiet; the only melody present the rhythmic breathing of company members preparing for class. But today, the studio seems to be filled with an underlying buzz. And Giselle doesn't have the slightest idea why.

"I heard he slept with the artistic director's wife, so they kicked him out of the Royal," she hears one of the new corps de ballet members murmur.

"I mean have you seen him, I don't blame her for getting her hands on a piece of him," another girl giggles.

"Did you hear, G?" Caleb, Giselle's friend, whispers as he slides into a spot on the barre behind her, adjusting the black bandana keeping his signature black curls in place across his forehead.

"Hear what?" Giselle asks, removing her leg from the bar before reaching down to adjust the black leg warmer that had fallen down her calf.

"They've hired Harry Styles- you know from the Royal," Caleb adds as if Giselle hasn't heard of Harry Styles. Everyone who was anyone in the ballet world had heard of Harry Styles. A good chunk of the non-ballet world might even be able to point him out as that 'sexy male ballet dancer' from the Sports Illustrated nude edition.

Harry Styles was a rare kind of natural talent. The type of person that was put on this earth to dance ballet. His talent had landed him the honor of being the youngest person to be named a principal in the history of the Royal Ballet. And if the rumors were true, that talent had also landed him the reputation of one of the ballet world's most arrogant. Giselle had heard several stories about how the male dancer had been a terror to work with- demanding, rude, uncooperative. Giselle didn't doubt it- people of that skill and fame rarely developed without some sense of entitlement.

"Why would we hire Harry Styles, we've already got Viktor?" Giselle questions. This isn't the first time a rumor has circulated through the American Ballet Theatre company, and it certainly won't be the last time. 

"Rumor is they want Viktor to retire," Caleb shrugged before stepping back to his place behind Giselle as Mistress Ivanova claps to gain the class's attention.

Giselle couldn't believe the rumors. Viktor Dmitri retiring from ABT? He was practically the face of the company. The man had been dancing for the American Ballet Theatre for over a decade. He'd been the principal ever since Giselle had joined the company as a corps de ballet member five years ago. 

Giselle knew that retirement came early for a ballet dancer. Her own mother, the famous Natalia Korsakova, had retired at the age of 33 after a knee injury. Viktor had just turned 35, but he'd shown no signs of slowing down. She refused to believe that he was calling it quits. Or to believe that the board would be stupid enough to bring in someone with Harry Styles's toxic reputation into the company.

She shoves the thought aside. Viktor is in his usual place at the back of the studio and Harry Styles is nowhere to be seen. This was simply another piece of gossip threatening to distract everyone from the Swan Lake auditions tomorrow afternoon, and Giselle won't lose her focus. The auditions are too important.

Giselle Mason has dreamed of playing the role of Odette/Odile ever since she first watched her mother on stage at the age of four. It was one of her earliest memories of the theater- her mother twirling about in a bright white tutu that at that time Giselle could only dream of wearing. In fact, Giselle wasn't sure there had ever been a moment where her dream hadn't been to be a principal dancer at ABT, like her mother. She'd been in ballet shoes from the second she could walk, wore a leotard and tights more often than she'd worn pajamas, and didn't recognize herself in the mirror if her hair wasn't pulled back into a bun. She'd ate, slept and breathed the art form. But she supposed that all came with having a prima ballerina as a mother.

Natalia Korsakova was a ballet sensation. "One of the greatest to have ever danced," according to the New York Times  at the time of her retirement. The world had come to watch her dance and she'd traveled it performing: Russia, Australia, London, Paris. You name the location and Natalia Korsakova had danced there.

When Giselle was growing up, she was constantly told how lucky she was to have Natalia as a mother. To have seen the shows she's seen, to have met ballet royalty, to have traveled the world. But Giselle never felt lucky. Not when she was the accident that put her mother's career on hold for almost a year. Not when her mother was gone for months at a time performing, missing recitals, parent days and school concerts. And certainly not when an injury forced her mother into retirement, shifting her focus from her own artistic talents to turning her daughter into her next protegee.

Much to her mother's dismay, Giselle was not the younger version of her mother. She was good, great even, but she was no sensation. Giselle made soloist in her fourth year at ABT, which was a feat all on its own, unless you compared it to her mother's two. Giselle lacked the raw, natural talent that her mother possessed. Instead of her mother's high arches, she had her father's averagely flat feet. Instead of her mother's uncanny ability to match the music, Giselle had spent hours counting eights in her head to get down a rhythm. Instead of looking effortless the first time she ran through a routine, Giselle spent hours in the studio after rehearsal, running through the choreography until it wasn't possible for her to get it wrong. Giselle had gotten to where she was because of her hard work, not her natural talent- something her mother would never let her forget. To Natalia Korsakova, Giselle would never measure up.

The Swan Lake auditions are Giselle's first real shot at landing a lead, especially with principal dancer Anna Elliot out with a back injury for the foreseeable future. Giselle wants this role more than anything. To prove to herself that she is capable of  following in her mother's footsteps. And to prove to her mother that she is just as capable a dancer as she. For once in her life, she wants to hear her mother say not that she'd lost her spot or forgot to point her toes, but that she was proud of Giselle. Four words- that's all Giselle really wants.

"And will start first position, demi, demi, grand, demi and port de bra. Repeat in 2nd, 4th and 5th and then balance in fifth position arms in fifth," Mistress Ivanova barks, before gesturing to the pianist to begin.

Giselle focuses on her movements as the music begins. She tightens her core, elongates her neck and reaches her fingertips to the edges of her silhouette. Her legs quiver slightly as she bends her knees into the first grand plié, her mind focusing on maintaining her turnout.

"Relax that face Giselle," Mistress Ivanova corrects, as she makes her way around the room. "I don't want to see that this is work."

Giselle takes another deep breath, this time releasing her lips from their concentrated place and focusing on her breath. She lets the downtown Manhattan studio disappear from the background. Gone is the distant honking of impatient taxi drivers maneuvering their way through the New York City traffic. Gone is the light shining in from the full-length windows looking out at the city skyline- well what you could see of the skyline behind the crumbly brick building neighboring the school. There was nothing but the dancer, the barre and the music flowing gently through her veins.

"Beautiful lines Teagan, thank you," Giselle hears Mistress Ivanova say from across the room and she fights the urge to roll her eyes. Giselle has known Teagan Davidson since she was fourteen years old, when Teagan had moved from California to New York to join the ABT school. Over the course of a decade of competing for roles, partners and teacher's praises, the two had developed quite a rivalry. To Giselle, there was almost no better feeling than snagging a role that she knew Teagan also had her eyes on.

Giselle uses Teagan's praise as motivation to work harder, feeling the burn in her inner thighs as she pushes further into her grand plié in second. The role of Odette/Odile was hers, Teagan would have to settle for understudy.

The class is in the middle of their balance, Giselle's focus locked in on a spot just at the edge of the window at the rear of the studio when a loud bang reverberates through the room. Dancers drop their balance and turn their heads, looking to see who has caused such a commotion with their entrance.

"Mr. Styles, you're late," Mistress Ivanova snaps.

He is taller than Giselle imagined, and even from this distance she can see the definition in his arms through the black tank top that clings to his body. His hair is slightly disheveled, curling at the top. His face plastered into some cheeky grin, dimples present on both cheeks, like he knows exactly what he's doing, interrupting class like this. Almost like he's enjoying the attention. He throws his black messenger bag to the side before grabbing his ballet shoes and scurrying over to an open spot at the barre near the front of the studio.

"My apologies," he replies in a thick British accent. His tone sounds anything but apologetic.

"Damn, he's even better-looking in person than he is in magazines," Caleb mutters under his breath, eliciting an eye roll from Giselle.

"Well, I suppose after that entrance," Mistress Ivanova sighs, stepping to the front of the class. "Now is as good of time as any to announce that Mr. Styles will be joining our company as a principal dancer."

Gasps fill the room, and Giselle turns her head to look at Viktor, whose face is stoic after Harry's entrance. A low chatter fills the studio, everyone trying to figure out exactly what is going on. Would he get the lead in Swan Lake? Would he be understudying Viktor?

"Silence!" Mistress Ivanova shouts. "This chatter can wait until after class is over!" She turns to face Harry, her lips turned into a stern frown. "If you'll find a place at the barre Mr. Styles, we will continue our class."

Giselle watches as he slides into a spot at the front of the room, shooting a grin at the young company member behind him. Giselle rolls her eyes, returning her focus to the mirror in front of her. Two minutes with the company and she was sure Harry Styles was exactly who she thought he would be.

Giselle tries to forget Harry Styles is in class with them. Instead she focuses on her breathing, her turnout, the rhythm that comes from the pianist in the corner of the room. She watches the early morning New York City sunrise reflect off of the mirrors, leaving little spots of sunlight over the gray Marley floor. Everyone else in the company could focus on Harry Styles all they want, but she is only focusing on one thing- and that is landing the role of her dreams tomorrow.

But Harry Styles wasn't the type of person whose presence could be forgotten so easily.

********

Harry Styles isn't scared of a little attention. In fact, he typically thrives on it. That's why he is a performer after all. To Harry, there is no better feeling than knowing all eyes are upon you, that you are the center of attention, the focus of the room. Maybe that is a prideful and egotistical thing to say, but it is true. Everyone wants to feel important, valued, admired- and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

But the attention Harry has been getting since he walked into the American Ballet Theatre studio a little over twelve hours ago has not been the type of attention he necessarily sought out. He knew there would be rumors, leaving the only company he had ever been a part of during his dance career was sure to draw up the best of them, but something about this felt different. It was the whispers. The stares. The way some members of the room were staring at Harry as if he was a god and a few wouldn't dare look in his direction.

Harry doesn't know what's come over him- this wavering self-confidence. Maybe it's this new place. This new country. Or maybe it's the fact that in the words of his agent, if he "doesn't get his act together" he will never dance at this level again. And if he's not dancing on the world's biggest stages, well, Harry might as well not be dancing at all.

Harry grabs his phone from the side pocket of his black messenger bag, connecting it to the Bluetooth speaker he found in the corner of the studio and presses play on his hip hop playlist. He needs something to drown out his thoughts, and classical music just doesn't cut it. As the beat begins to fill the studio, Harry lets the music take over his body and begins to dance.

Giselle tries to focus on her music, but there's the noise of a pounding bass in the background interfering with concentration. She's always the only one at the studio this late at night- that's why she comes- to be alone and without distractions.

She tries to ignore it, focusing on the one and two of the music as she fouettés. One and two, three and four, five and... a boom from somewhere in the building breaks her concentration and she falls out of her turn, letting out a groan. This could not be happening to her the night before auditions, and if she found out that Teagan was here trying to interfere with her practice...

Giselle makes her way down the hall, guided by the incessant bass that sounds like it belongs in the backseat of a teenager's car and not one of the most prestigious ballet studios in the world. When she turns the corner to enter the studio, it's not Teagan she sees but Harry Styles.

But he's not dancing. He's laying on the floor, wearing nothing but a pair of black athletic shorts that show off the god-like definition of his thighs. His signature butterfly tattoo stands out on the middle of his chest, beads of sweat dripping towards the center of his stomach, the bass vibrating the mirrors around him. He doesn't notice her at first. How could he with the music so loud?

"Excuse me," Giselle says loudly in an effort to get his attention. His body doesn't even flinch.

"Excuse me!" she yells this time. 

Harry looks up. In the corner of the studio, towards the door stands a girl. Her almost black hair is pulled tightly back into a bun. Her thin arms are crossed like she's about to lecture him, and her lips are held in a tight line that looks anything but happy. The corners of Harry's mouth curve upwards in a grin, entertained by the fury that was seeming to come from her tiny body.

She taps her foot impatiently, like she's waiting for something. Harry realizes that she is- she's waiting for him to turn off his music.

He sighs, reaching over to his phone beside him and sliding one sweaty finger across the screen to bring the rhythm to a halt.

"Yes?" he asks expectantly, not bothering to move his body from his reclining position.

"Other people in this studio are trying to practice, you know. It's kinda hard to do that with this," she gestures into the air, as if trying to find an appropriate adjective to describe the torture that had been gracing her ears over the past half hour.

"Not a fan of my music?" Harry smirked.

"I'm not a fan of someone disrupting my rehearsal." Giselle spit back.

"Rehearsal? It's bloody 11pm."

"I know what time it is, and like I said, your music is interfering with my ability to practice." Giselle stares Harry right in the eyes. He doesn't intimidate her, and she's not going to back down until he agrees to turn down his music.

"Wasn't aware you were the owner of this studio," Harry taunts.

"I could say the same about you." Giselle moves her hands to her hips. Just agree to turn off the damn music, she thinks to herself, even though she knows at this point, it's not worth the time it will take to warm back up to continue practicing.

Harry sits up, grabbing a blue towel from inside his bag and wiping the sweat that remains off his forehead. "Fine, music's off. Continue your rehearsal. I'm too jet lagged for this shit," he stands, wrapping the towel around his neck.

"Thanks," Giselle says under her breath, before making her way back to her studio, where she knew she would be gathering her own belongings.

Harry groans, grabbing his bag from the floor and sliding it over his shoulder. You could travel halfway across the world and still run into the same entitled ballet brats who thought they ran the place. It's those type of people, company members and otherwise, that were precisely the reason he had left the Royal. Well, not that he had necessarily had a say in that scenario, but they had been the cause of all of his problems.

You just have to dance, Harry, he tries to tell himself. But Harry knows that as much as he tries, there's a lot more too it than that.

**********

“Gi!" Caleb exclaims, bounding down the hallway towards her without concern for anyone in his way. "Cast list is up."

Giselle gulps. She isn't sure that she is ready for this. The look of disappointment on her mother's face if she doesn't land the part. The list of corrections that her mother has come up with from watching Giselle's audition. "Now you see there, you've lost your center. You're never going to make that triple if you don't hold your center Giselle." The reminder that "you only have so many opportunities to prove your worth, before they move onto the younger, better version of you." It didn't matter to her mother if Giselle was the youngest soloist at ABT by five years. It didn't matter if nearly every other soloist had previously understudied for the role. Everything but a lead was a disappointment to Natalia Korsakova.

"C'mon," Caleb exclaims, and before Giselle has a moment to collect herself she's being pulled down the hallway by her arm.

And there it is. The thin, white piece of paper that holds the fate of her next ten weeks in its hands. When she looks at it at first, she thinks she must be dreaming. Because her name has never been on that spot on the list before. Not since she officially joined the company five years ago.

Odette/Odile- Giselle Mason

Sigfried - Harry Styles

She feels frozen. Like she's in a dream and she's paralyzed. It's what she's always wanted-this role and yet, suddenly it feels like a whole lot of pressure.

"You did it Gi," Caleb exclaims, lifting her up and spinning her around before Giselle even has a moment to look any further down the list. Giselle laughs, giddy with excitement. "New York will have never seen a more beautiful Odette."

Giselle rolls her eyes at his comment. Caleb, her friend since joining the American Ballet School at the age of six and partner for many years had always been her biggest cheerleader. In a way, he made up for what she didn't have in her mother.

"And you Caleb?" Giselle asks, realizing in her excitement that she had forgotten that her best friend also had a role in the this ballet.

"You're looking at the newest Benno," Caleb says with a grin. Giselle often wondered what it would be like to be like Caleb. To be happy with any role. To not care about his place in the company. To simply want to dance. Caleb had always been like that- relaxed, calm- the antithesis to Giselle who was always high strung and anxious. Perhaps that's why they'd always been such good friends, because they balanced each other perfectly. Giselle pushed Caleb when he needed some extra motivation and Caleb- albeit not always successful- tried his best to keep Giselle out of her own head.

Giselle watches as Teagan makes her way over to the board, her long black hair swinging from the ponytail at the crown of her head. She grins in slight satisfaction as she sees Teagan's face turn into a frown. Giselle turns and gives Caleb her best, "what did she get?" eyes. He exaggeratedly mouths, "UNDERSTUDY".

As if sensing that she is the topic of conversation, Teagan looks over at the two. "Congrats Giselle," she says, her face moving in a way that makes it seem like the words taste disgusting leaving her mouth.

"You as well," Giselle responds, to which Teagan only scoffs and storms off.

"You know she's going to make your life living hell as your understudy don't you?" Caleb said with a laugh.

"Ugh, I know," Giselle groaned.

"It will be worth it though. You are going to be dancing the role you've always dreamed of." Giselle smiled. "Plus," Caleb begins, leaning down so his mouth is next to Giselle's ear. "You get to dance with the greatest male dancer of our generation. Think of all the hours you're gonna get to spend looking at that GORGEOUS body."

Giselle groans. Her perfect moment temporarily ruined by the realization that she would have to dance with Harry Styles. Sure, he may be talented, a great dancer, and likely a great partner. But his entrance yesterday and their encounter last night told her everything she needed to know about Harry Styles. And she was sure that working with him would be anything but easy.

"That GORGEOUS body," Giselle imitates Caleb with an exaggeration of the word, "Doesn't make up for the fact that the guy's an asshole."

"Okay, okay, point taken. Now can we go get some lunch?"

Giselle nods, but she already knows she's not hungry. Instead, all she can think about is how she's going to get through the next ten weeks of rehearsals with a man she already loathes.

**********

Giselle slides into the rehearsal studio with extra joy in her step later that afternoon. She's so on Cloud 9 that she doesn't even realize Harry standing at the barre doing pliés as she hums the opening notes of Swan Lake aloud.

"Sorry didn't know anyone else was in here already," she apologizes quickly, standing and stretching out her feet.

Harry looks at her, his face hard and eyes sharp. If he recognized her as the girl who interrupted his jam session last night his face didn't show it. "And who are you?" Harry asks, his voice laced with condescendence.

"Odette," Giselle smiles, the words feeling foreign leaving her mouth.

"Obviously," Harry scoffs, and Giselle feels her confidence waver. "Who are you?"

"Giselle Mason, soloist."

"Doesn't ring a bell," the corners of Harry's mouth turn up at his comment, like he gets satisfaction out of reminding others that they aren't the household name that he is.

Giselle wants to say something back. Something sharp and witty to show him that just because he was one of the greatest dancers in the world and she was still trying to make her way into the spotlight didn't mean that he could treat her like a nobody. She was going to be his partner after all- whether he liked it or not. But then Gregory Alexander, ABT's Artistic Director, enters the room, clapping his hands and tells them they are about to begin on the Act II Pas de Deux and Giselle doesn't have a chance to say otherwise.

"As new partners you will need to put in the time to understand each other. Build trust. Anticipate the other's movement. Portray to the audience that you are a swan and a prince in love." Gregory moves his arms in the air theatrically, as if he isn't wearing a designer suit.

"Now I understand that the ten weeks we have to prepare before our season debut isn't an ideal amount of time to form a relationship with a new partner. But in this case, it simply must do." Gregory's face turned serious, the wrinkles on his forehead more defined as he furrows his eyebrows. "I expect that the two of you will put in the time outside of your scheduled rehearsals to work on this chemistry. Anna and Viktor will also be assisting with rehearsals and my hope is that they will also be able to assist the two of you with this transition."

"Gregory," Harry interrupts, then as if realizing he'd made a mistake, he corrects himself. "Sir."

Gregory nods.

"I'm not sure what the concern is. I've danced with hundreds of partners in my career, I'm not sure how the other principal's would have much more experience than me?" Giselle thinks Harry is meaning this as a question but it comes out more like a statement.

Giselle watches as Gregory's eyes narrow again. He looked irritated, and why wouldn't he be? Harry had been here all but forty-eight hours and was already questioning the artistic director's decisions. 

"That may be the case, Mr. Styles," Gregory paused. "But when the two of you step onto Metropolitan Opera House stage in ten weeks, I expect the audience to believe that you two have been dancing together for years. Have I made myself clear?"

Harry nods, this time remaining quiet.

"Now then, I'd like us to start with the Act II Pas de Deux. The very beginning- with your entrance Harry."

It's an hour into rehearsals when Giselle hears the echo of heels clicking down the wooden hallways. She doesn't even have to look up when the steps stop as they reach the studio floor. She could recognize that walk anywhere.

"Aahh, Natalia!" Gregory exclaims. "So glad you could stop by," Gregory reaches over to embrace Giselle's mother, his grey hair brushing the sides of her face as he kisses each cheek.

"Mr. Styles, I'd like to introduce you to Natalia Korsakova, former ABT principal and member of our board."

Natalia Korsakova looks as put together as always. Her dark brown hair pulled tightly into a neat French twist. Her tight black dress and coordinating pumps show off every bit of the dancer's body that she still maintained. Giselle watches as her mother's mouth curves to form a polite smile.

"A ballet legend. It's an honor to meet you Madame," Harry says offering his hand.

"The pleasure is all mine. I'm so glad you are joining us here at ABT. And what a joy it will be to watch you next to my daughter," Natalia gestures towards Giselle, with a polite smile plastered on her face that was generally reserved for generous donors and patrons of the ballet. It is all a show. That's all Giselle's mother ever did was put on a production. She was a performer after all, how could anyone expect her life to be anything but a crowd-pleasing performance?

"Your daughter?" Harry turns to look at Giselle, raising an eyebrow. His eyes narrow, as if he's caught Giselle in a lie. As if she'd snuck her way into this position and was just hoping that someone wouldn't notice she wasn't the real deal. "Why that makes this even more special."

Giselle fights every urge to roll her eyes from across the room. It is clear that Harry Styles is every bit as much of a performer as her mother. Just minutes before he was looking at her as if he had been paired with an amateur and suddenly working with her is 'something special'?

"I'm going to watch rehearsal for a bit," Natalia announces, making her way over to a stool next to the pianist. "Carry on." The pit in the bottom of Giselle's stomach grows as her mother takes a seat next to Gregory in front of the mirror.

"Odette makes sense to me now," Harry whispers into Giselle's ear, as he slides behind her to resume practice. It takes everything in her to keep her face stoic as Harry's hands settle once again on her waist.

Rehearsal goes badly. Giselle can't seem to get her leg into the attitude position that Gregory wants, she losing her balance on her penchés, and Harry almost drops her on several promenades. Giselle says almost, because someone as experienced as Harry Styles would never let his partner hit the ground, but she should have, because she surely wasn't holding her weight quite right. And then there's the fact that Gregory pronounced that Giselle "looks at Harry as if he is the villain of the story instead of the prince she's fallen in love with". 

Giselle wants to say that's because he is the villain. The villain of her story anyways, the person that is somehow going to turn her dream role into somewhat of a nightmare. Why couldn't she be dancing with Viktor? He was so patient and kind and he would never look at his partner as if she deserved to be in the audience instead of on stage with him.

After yet another failed run through of the first half of the pas de deux, Gregory announces that they are done for the day, but that he expects to see them in the studio bright and early tomorrow morning to work on their timing. Giselle's never been so thankful for a rehearsal to be over, and as she sits down to remove her pointe shoes, running her hands over her swollen feet, she watches Harry leave the studio without saying a word.

"I hope you realize how big of an opportunity this is Giselle. It's not one you should take lightly," her mother's voice startles her, as Giselle had almost forgotten she was there. Almost.

Natalia stands above Giselle, one hand on her hips and the other on her forehead, as if watching today's rehearsal had been exhausting for her. It probably was exhausting for her, keeping tally of all the things that Giselle had done wrong for the past two hours. Natalia's voice is shrill as she speaks again. "There are thousands of ballerinas around the world that could only dream of getting to dance with Harry Styles. And here you are dancing with him in his first show with ABT. That's an enormous responsibility, darling. This performance with him will set the stage for his entire career with our company. One that the board is hoping will last until his retirement."

Giselle nods. That's all she can do when her mother begins one of her lectures- nod. She thought maybe this would be the time that her mother told her congratulations. The time that her mother did what she'd watched countless other mother's do during her time as a dancer, wrap their arms around their daughter and express their pride to them. But instead, today is like any other day, and even with a lead role in an ABT production, Giselle still hasn't done enough to make her mother proud.

Giselle shoves her shoes into her bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she stands.

"And Giselle?" her mother adds, as she makes her way towards the door.

"Yes mom?" 

"Might want to hit a few more cardio classes this week too, my dear. Got to make sure you are going to be an easy dancer to partner with." 

And with that comment Natalia Korsakova clicks away, leaving Giselle standing in the middle of studio wondering if her biggest dream has suddenly become her biggest nightmare.

[princessnijireiki]

this visual novel app I been playing to distract me from feeling like dookie (dress up! time princess) is actually kinda interesting... the basis is a player chara gets sucked into a book abt marie antoinette & is like "well I ENTIRELY disagree w how HER life played out, YIKES" & has to try to like. figure out how to repair her reputation & deal w revolution using 20th century knowledge to avoid getting killed lol

and like obvs there's romance stuff (louis xvi, marquis de lafayette, and a swedish soldier named fersen? idk if he's real, I clearly do not pay close attention to european royalty), but you're still married w kids so it's like "aw he pledged his undying love for me... that's nice" lmao, and there's multiple endings you can hit even beyond the diff romance angles.

like fully a few "wow you fucked up & will be guillotined. the end," or a bit where an assassin attacks you, and you can choose which man saves you, and if you pick one of the soldiers, it's cool, but if you pick YOUR HUSBAND, THE KING, the assassin just stabs him in the heart with GARDENING SHEARS and the ending is like "you idiot. he loves you but has no combat training. restart this chapter. the end."

and there's a storyline where you avert the revolution entirely by removing protections from nobility & the church by taxing the dogshit out of all the rich people (incl your best friend's husband, who hired the assassin to avoid being audited?!), but your commoner "friends" are BUMMED OUT, like bestie & her kids get sent to an abbey after her husband is exiled for felony tax evasion (but not attempted murder), but the working people around the queen are like. hmm. that's nice I guess. anyway we long for freedom...

but the game itself is REALLY invested in both "the revolution is inevitable & absolute monarchies must crumble... see if you can still survive without kicking off a literal war, though" + "marie antoinette was ABSOLUTELY an engineer of her own downfall, tragic though it may have been," which is a FASCINATING angle for a princess dress up game.

also you start out w the default "doll" design (blonde & white) but you can change your character base model a few chapters in, and there's additional "books" you can play through once you finish/if you don't want to play as marie beyond those initial tutorial chapters, though idk how long it takes to earn those points to "buy" new stories bc I've stuck with marie thus far.

I'm just like holy shit okay we've neglected to mention french colonies or anything but this is still better researched than hamilton, AND it has a cat feature where little cats can bring you in game items + the developers have already had an event where proceeds for all in game purchases during a certain timeframe went to cat rescue orgs. and there's also a spy who dresses in drag. not for tactical reasons, he just likes it. hasn't worn pants not one time so far. what more could you ask for lol?

[cicerobussytransplant]

sofiaaaa my bright spark of truth and wisdom, as the resident yennefer expert i wanted to ask what your intellectual opinion is on her various portrayals (books, show and vg) and how well you think each adaptation has served her!

so fhdhdjd the big caveat is that I dont remember the books all *too* well in their finer details

that being said i do think the books are what trumps most other adaptations lmao. they just have The Range when it comes to interesting dynamics for her to cycle through; to name a few: bitter exes with geralt + being somebody's Great Love but also being desperately dysfunctional while being together and hopelessly Not Meant to Last + being ride or die for her adoptive ward + deeply antagonistic professional relationships with esteemed collegues while also being along for the ride in all-female club for political world domination.

And while the short stories have the focus on her relationship with geralt, so she is more love interest than coprotagonist as in the rest of the series, they do allow her complexities and dont recriminate her as most other fantasy would; like in the last wish she wants power and while she cant get it you dont see that dany argument of 'she was wrong to want it'; or when she entertains two relationships (one with geralt, the other with istredd) at the same time and then fucks off bc she got commitment issues lmao it doesnt become a big plot point later on of having to amend when geralt is pretty much a manwhore himself.

what i do have to say is that the more the actual series goes on, around book 3 out of 5, the scope moves from geralt and pals to the fate of the world is in the balance and she gets really de-prioritised in the face of other characters which is :////. tho admittedly i appreciate the series for having her be more a coprotagonist than a love interest in actual page time (she and geralt are together, as in not physically apart, for abt 2 books out of 5) and the rest of the time she has meaningful relationships with other ppl, mostly women too. (ie: ciri tissaia, philippa, fringilla, the rest of the lodge too to a lesser extent) while doing her own thing.

also i personally find the entire 'are they bound by fate and thats why they keep coming back or are they just, naturally, each other's IT regardless of the jinn' subtext the books have very appealing dhdbs

i think the games are second bc they just have problems when it comes to how they developed the trilogy. fhdhd mostly bc of triss tbh. like they dont mention yen AT ALL for two games, so when she does come around in the third, i feel like her standing as 'theeee Great Love of Geralts life' even if they are not together doesnt come across as well.

also, another problem coming from the framing of geralt as the protagonist is that yens role is tied to geralt and ciri and what they decide to do, thus limiting her interactions with other characters as well (not saying i was gunning for yen+philippa but yes). in terms of arc, im just not that much of a fan of the ending :/// i think it tried to be too much that conventional 'lets settle down with a house and occasionally the kids come to visit' that i dont think it suits her (or geralt) all too well. like i get that the world almost ending puts a spin on ones priorities but eh :( why be so conventional abt it

that being said they do get the spirit of the love of my life so they get a certain amount of points, and i do enjoy how they chose to tackle the entire the last wish redux quest bc either solution is actually a pretty interesting way to view the relationship

idk wtf the show is on abt tbh. like its so weird to see scenes i remember from the books but that either miss the punch of them all or seem to just Not Get It. like what is the point of introducing istredd, whose existence is tied to that one short story where he appears, if they do not plan to adapt the short story? especially since they planned on expanding yens role in the story with filler but they also decide to cut the few short stories where she appears? like make it make sense

also im extremely peeved bc the idea of showing her academy phase is good in theory, but in practice it doesnt seem to respect narrative economy. like, in theory, the academy phase could be 1) good setup for the rest of the lodge members (PHILIPPA, margarita, sabrina, sheila etc) and how they impact her as teachers/collegues but ??? the show is like why dont we get more istredd scenes (who is, I repeat, described by yen as a casual relationship, deeper for him than it ever was for her, and doesnt even appear in the main series). 2) good to juxtapose how she was taught and how yen then subverts those teachings when it comes to ciri as an apprentice.

and tbh I feel like s1 seems to focus on goals that, yes, she pursues to some extent but willfully missing how much it impacts her as a character. like yes, she does undergo the magical equivalent of surgery to remove her disability to fit a beauty standard fostered upon her, but tbh? it isnt the be all end all for yen in the books. it just isnt the part of her arc that is most relevant. same for the wanting kids part: she wants a cure for her infertility and it does impact her relationship with ciri but the 'baby fever' crazy is two short stories out of 7 books so :/

i am not one for crazy theories but tbh I feel like the downgrade of yens interactions with other ppl in the show is due to how many of those in the source material are tied to other women but the show cannot conceptualise to expand on them, if not even make them up for the sake of foreshadowing. hence. istredd being such a relatively prominent figure. i dont hate the guy i just think hes boring and he drags yen down with him, which I cant forgive