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in-a-mountain-pool · 7 months

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The Dragon Boy - Chapter One

Aemond x Fem!Dragonseed OC Kaelys Waters

pronouns: She/her (afab)

rating: Teen and Up Audiences

warnings: Angst, Romance, Major Character Death

word count: ~3600+

summary: Chaos unfolds after the battle at the Gods Eye. After his defeat, Prince Aemond Targaryen is declared dead, laying at the bottom of the great lake. Upon hearing the news, Kaelys Waters, a Dragonseed from Aemond’s past defects from the Blacks, and stumbles upon a mysterious enigmatic dragon with a broken wing. Tending to its wounds and reminiscing of her childhood infatuation, she mourns the passing of the Prince Regent. Love deepens amid a whirlwind of emotions, culminating in a heart-warming tale of love transcending magic and curses, uniting two souls against all odds.

Originally posted on AO3

A/N: Hi everyone! Here it is, this is my submission for @hotd-bigbang! I'd like to give a huge thank you to @ewanmitchellcrumbs for putting together this wonderful event, and for being so understanding of my chaotic writing process! It was an absolute pleasure getting to work with @cyeco13 , who has produced some of the most gorgeous artwork for this story (I literally teared up opening her messages!), thank you so much for capturing Aemond and Kaelys so perfectly.

Thanks for reading! To begin with, this was intended to be a one-shot but due to some circumstances beyond my control, I have decided to break it up into two chapters. Chapter two will be posted this time next week!

As always likes, reblogs and comments are not a requirement, but lovely to come online to.

The nights were cold in the Dragonpit, without the loving embrace of a mother or a father to shield you from the harsh land of Westeros, where frigid winds would pierce through like icy daggers. You had been there as long as you could remember, your earliest memories buried under years of neglect, left outside the pit in nothing but a tattered moth-eaten shawl. In a twist of fate, the Dragonkeepers had taken you under their wing, the first girl in history to be welcomed into the ancient order of guards.

You, a nameless orphan, were christened Kaelys, and raised as their own. But life had been hard and food scarce. Amidst crumbling stones of the pit, life was a relentless test of your mettle, a crucible of endurance. As the only girl, the other boys of the order would revel in their power and torment you relentlessly. They were the bane of your life, their taunts and physical assaults a painful reminder of the harsh realities that defined your existence.

In the dead of night, when the hunger had finally become unbearable, on stumbling feet you’d crept into the Red Keep, hugging the stone walls, searching for a scrap of whatever you could find. Within the fortress, an eerie stillness reigned supreme, a collective hush falling over the walls as if a great secret dwelled inside. Company was sparse this late at night, save for the sporadic appearance of a Goldcloak on patrol. During your tutelage you had mastered the art of silence, moving with a grace so profound that even the most vigilant of men might mistake you for a shadow in the night. You’d had to, growing up around the majestic and terrible beasts of the House Targaryen.

The only light you had seen in the imposing halls had been a small crack under a great set of wooden doors and the smell of old parchment. Curiosity got the better of you, and you gently pushed forward to take a peek…

Inside was a small boy with silver hair, a boy you recognised…

It was him.

The boy without a dragon.

Prince Aemond Targaryen.

When the door creaked your heart froze as the child whipped his head around with an almost otherworldly reflex.

Aemond stared at you for a moment, his head tilted over slightly to the side. The boy's violet eyes held a quiet curiosity, gazing at you in the same manner you’d seen him study the dragons inside the pit.

In a small yet commanding voice, he called out to you, standing up slowly from his solar.

“... Who goes there…? What might your name be, girl?”

Not a word left your lips, your face panic-stricken and pale as the moonlight creeping through the bay windows of the library.

A quiet but exasperated huff left his cat-like mouth, and a look of dissatisfaction decorated his delicate features.

“That’s not very polite, is it? You should at least tell me your name. I promise, I won’t tell on you.”

Aemond attempted to make eye contact with you to no avail, met with a wall of silence. A soft scowl fell over his face, like he’d perhaps thought something might be wrong with you. Or like you were a puzzle that he wished to solve.

Finding your courage you shifted out of the shadows, eyes searching the halls around you for the slightest movement in the dark.

“... Kaelys, My Prince. ‘My name is Kaelys.” You croak out in a pathetic tone, giving a rather poor curtsey, copying the movements you’d seen his sister, the Princess Helaena practice to the knights at the tourney months earlier.

You wobble slightly as you ascend from the floor, the scrap of your dress hem catching under your sandaled foot.

The boy smiled and chuckled before you, nodding with a little grin like he’d finally made some progress. His curiosities were still present as he beckoned you into the warm library and eagerly offered you a seat beside him.

“Well, good evening, Kaelys. … Why, if I might ask, are you here in the Keep, all alone?” Aemond whispered, leaning forward to inspect you.

“... ‘was hungry, my Prince. P-please, don’t call the guards. I’ll leave quietly. Quiet as a mouse! ‘Won’t even know I was ‘ere!” You uttered fearfully, your hazel eyes locked to his, begging him silently.

Lilac eyes widened and peered into yours once more.

“Hungry…?” Aemond asked, like such a thing was unthinkable to him, brought up amongst such riches. After a moment, his eyes fluttered and his bottom lip trembled.

“I won’t call anyone. No Guards. C-Come with me.” Aemond extended a pale shaking hand to you, waiting for you to take it.

“T-The kitchens should have some supper for you. I’d certainly be more comfortable with you not being out here… all alone in these halls.”

“Kitchens?! I- can’t! If I’m seen there I’ll get the lashing of a lifetime!” You whispered frantically, staring down at the boy’s hand, elegant fingers reaching out to you.

How could you touch him? It felt wrong when you were so grubby and dirty, to mar something so fair and beautiful as him, like you might leave an immovable stain on his perfect skin.

The words tumbled out in a way most unnatural to you. What was it about this boy, a Prince no less, that made you feel you could trust him? You seldom ever spoke, not even to your mentors. You had only ever felt safe with your dragons.

“T'aint proper. The Dragonkeepers stay in the pit. We eat in the pit. Sleep in the pit. I’m… not a Lady. Not Royalty.” You mumble, gesturing to him and looking down at his velvet boots next to your dirty feet, remembering your place.

Not once did he ever lower his hand, almost as if he was trying to tame you like a wild animal, like one of his family’s dragons in the pit. He approached you with caution, but with an unmistakable respect and patience that made your heart anxious.

“Kaelys…? Do you have any place to rest your head at night?” Aemond questioned you in a gentle tone, peering into your tired eyes. “Does someone look after you?”

“Mother and Father are dead. Left me outside the Keep. Dragonkeepers feed me, but… we’re often hungry.”

Aemond seemed stunned into silence. The realisation that the tiny girl in front of him, of no more than 12 years, was alone. Truly alone. The longer he was silent, the more uncomfortable he became. The thought that a girl, so young and vulnerable, had already lost everything she’d ever had or could ever hope to own. She’d never really had a chance, and it just wasn't right.

The boy straightened up and stood taller, a determined resolute look in his pointed features.

“You’re coming with me. And before you say another word, I’m not going to tell on you. In fact, I won’t tell anyone. Not a soul.” His tone had changed, much softer and caring than it had been moments before.

You had heard stories about the young prince. He was lonely, and studious, the polar opposite of his raucous brother, Aegon. Perhaps he had just wanted a friend? Underneath the silver hair and the riches of his house, he was a lanky sort of boy, on the cusp of something greater than himself. So unsure, and so desperate to connect.

Ever so cautiously, you reached out to take his hand in yours. Next to him, your hand looked so careworn and grubby, unworthy. He saw the dirt under your fingernails, and the weeks of grime on your dress, yet he never faltered in his grip as he discreetly led you deeper into the Keep along lonely corridors to his chambers.

Once inside you couldn’t believe your eyes. You’d never seen such grandeur, the table filled with foods from all over Westeros, and all for the supper of one boy. There were meats piled high, roasted beef and potatoes, boiled vegetables and breads. Decadent sweets glistened in the candlelight, with mounds of delicate lemoncakes, sugared biscuits and candied fruits.

His room was filled with treasures and trinkets from all over Westeros and Essos. A dothraki sword adorned the wall above his bed, and a coin collection was scattered across his bed, with gold, silver and coppers of all shapes and sizes dotted about like stars upon his midnight blue blankets. Large shells almost as big as your head decorated a large desk near the balcony desk. You’d later discover they had been taken from a bay in Volantis by his Father, and he’d been drawing them in a notepad. Marble carved dragons were placed in order of size along his mantle, with random shards of dragon glass decorating his chaotic but organised desk. But best of all was a worn plush of Balerion the Black Dread, shoved underneath his pillow, sewn by his wet nurse when he was a child.

As Aemond stepped inside, he reluctantly set down your hand, keeping a gentle eye on your expression. Your eyes were wide with wonder taking in the lavish food he readily offered you like it was nothing.

“... D-Don’t worry, Kaelys. That food is mine, mine to give you. Made by the finest cooks in the Keep.” Stumbling a little, he stepped behind you, and it took you a moment to realise that he intended to pull a chair for you to sit on.

Almost like he would a real Lady.

“Here. We- we can eat together, if you like? Like friends do.”

Slowly he started to make up a generous plate for you, with a selection of meats and vegetables to give you back your strength. With a shaking hand, he placed it in front of you, nodding and digging into his own.

Through a mouthful of food you finally start to speak once more, stealing timid glances at the young Prince..

“... Friends? D- Do you have many friends… that you play with?”

A heavy silence fell upon the room as the boy drew into himself for a long while, the only noises the clatter of silverware and the late drafts of the night. Aemond spoke in a careful manner as to try to not let his feelings betray him. His voice began to break and the awkwardness began to seep out of him, reminding you he was just an adolescent boy, with the weight of a dynasty upon his shoulders.

“No… I rather suppose I don’t. In truth, It is… hard for me to make them.”

You felt a deep need to reach out and support him, or to at least make him feel less alone, the boy who’d let you into his world.

“Me too. I don't have any friends neither.” You whisper, brushing the pad of your index finger against the back of his hand… And then rather unexpectedly, Aemond laughed, making you retreat once more.

“Either… You don't have any friends, either.” He chuckled again, covering his cat-like smirk with his fingers.

Sensing your displeasure and discomfort he gave you a soft look and pushed a lemon cake towards your plate, resting his chin on his hand as he studied you. He watched you for a while, as you picked at the crystallised peel in awe, giggling when your face puckered at the foreign sour sensation of the citrus in your cheeks.

Your eyes danced around the room as you ate, falling upon the small collection of little wooden knights left haphazardly before the roaring fire. You didn’t have any toys. You hadn’t ever been allowed to be a child.

“Would you- would you like to play with them? I can teach you all about my knights!”

Aemond's face lit up with unabashed excitement, youthful enthusiasm radiating from his every pore as he eagerly settled onto the floor beside the knights. In that moment, his age became evident in the meticulous grace with which he handled the toys, delicately extending them towards her, all the while tenderly bestowing each with a name. The boy spoke passionately, more animatedly than she had ever seen him in the dragon pit.

“This here is Aegon the Conqueror. Do you see? Each knight has their own dragon, and they ride together into war.”

As Aemond rambled on passionately , you couldn't help but find yourself joining him there in the warmth of the fire, legs crossed and shyly tracing the beautiful handmade figurines like they were made of glass.

“... She is beautiful. The big one.” You gesture bashfully, a rare smile gracing your face as he offers you the wooden toy. “... Vhagar.”

Aemond’s eyes widened, aglow with an innocence and wonder only a child’s eyes could muster.

“Yes! You know of Vhagar? And do you know why she is so special?

“She’s the oldest dragon in the whole world.” You say almost instantly, staring at the wooden dragon in admiration. “She was Queen Visenya’s dragon.”

Aemond’s eyes flickered with a glimmer of surprise, as if your knowledge of Vhagar had caught him off-guard.

“Yes, she was!” He admitted, his words imbued with a quiet reverence. “She still soars above our world to this day, a testament to her indomitable spirit. And, you know, one day, I’m going to be the one to mount her and take to the skies.”

Aemond'sAemonds gaze fixed on you, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes, as if he had entrusted you with a treasure trove of secrets known only to a select few.

“... Do you want to know another secret?” The boy asked with a small grin on his face, handing you yet another dragon.

Aemond drew in a deep breath, and his face lit up with a soft blush as he spoke the next words.

"I have a special wish, you know," he confided, his eyes locked onto Kaelys, eager to gauge her response. A hint of uncertainty lingered in his gaze, but his sincerity shone through.

"I want more than just a dragon, Kaelys. I want you to be my best friend."

And with that declaration, a unique bond was sealed. From that day forward, together you had embarked on clandestine adventures within the labyrinthine walls of the Red Keep, where you uncovered hidden nooks to play and whisper secrets to one another. Conversations had spanned countless hours, a symphony of dragon tales, and epic tales of knights and princesses that seemed to breathe life into the ancient stones of the castle and the dragon pit.

In each other, you had found your first and only true friends, kindred spirits divided by society. And when he’d finally claimed Vhagar, she had become your whole life, bringing you both even closer together.

He’d shown you what it meant to have a family.

… But if only you had known then, the horrors that would soon come to pass, dressed in colours of green, gold and black.

War had come to Westeros.

It had felt like the end of days, a tragedy painted with vicious strokes of fire and blood. The very ground beneath your feet had shaken, the winds had howled as dragons danced above the skies of the Riverlands in violent flashes of greens and reds, and clashes of razor sharp teeth. Brothers and sisters rode into war for a cause that no longer made sense, as kin marched upon kin, and dragons raged against dragons. History was dying, old magic was fading, all because one man, one King, had made a choice born from love.

But how could love ever endure in a world such as this? How could you fight for a Queen who ordered the death of an innocent child? Or a King that paraded the head of such a gracious beast as Meleys through the streets of Flea Bottom? How could hope live on here at the end of all things, where flames paint the skies, and babes were torn from their mother's arms?

… Helaena’s arms.

Since you’d heard the news from the other Dragonseeds’ on the battlefield you wouldn’t dare speak his name out loud. Bile would rise in your throat at the mere mention of him, the One-Eyed Prince, the Kinslayer, all of these names they’d given him, to the boy with violet eyes who’d captured your heart all those years ago.

He had met with his Uncle, your Mentor, above the God’s Eye only a week before. The village folk spoke of a fierce battle, with dragonfire so hot and so ferocious it was like the sky itself had been set aflame, and the Doom of Valyria had raged once more. The two beautiful beasts were said to have torn each other apart, Caraxes the Blood Wyrm sinking her teeth into Vhagar’s neck, before being disembowelled and crashing into the great lake below.

He, had always been so careful, even as a child, it was no wonder he’d chained himself so securely to the saddle. Daemon had known this and used it to his advantage. It had been you who had told Daemon so, you who had taught him how to tie the chains to keep him safe. Neither man nor dragon could have survived such a fall. Even a Targaryen Prince.

And now he was gone, it had felt like you might as well have drowned with him there in the God’s Eye. When your tears had fallen, you had insisted you had cried for Daemon, though the others who truly knew you had known better.

The smell of the summer flowers in the Godswood had filled your dreams, the sounds of children’s laughter, the warmth of his hand in yours. Braiding hair as white as snow, the flash of lilac in the candlelight of the Red Keep at night. Since you’d departed for Harenhal as a Dragonseed of the Black’s, you’d carried a piece of him in the pocket of your riding jacket, a small wooden carving of Vhagar he’d had made just for you. Every night you’d gripped it tight and wept for the loss of her… and her rider.

For you, the war was over. There was nothing left to fight for.

No one left to protect.

Under the moonlit sky, you rode through the darkness, leaving behind the tumultuous Black's encampment. The biting cold couldn't compare to the numbness that gripped your heart. The horse beneath you felt unfamiliar, its warmth offering no solace compared to the fiery passion and adventure that once accompanied your dragon, Bhaesys.

The battlefield had claimed her, just as it had claimed Vhagar and him.

Daemon, the architect of destruction, had torn apart not only your dragon but also your life, leaving the House of the Dragon in ruins and the land scarred with suffering.

With no clear destination in mind, you rode relentlessly for nearly a month, only to find yourself at the God's Eye. The vast expanse of tranquil waters reflected the sun's rays, masking the grim reality that all was not well in the world. Despite its majestic appearance, the God's Eye was a tomb, a silent witness to the ravages of war.

It became evident that you couldn't bear the weight any longer—the months of conflict, the years of hardship and camaraderie. Your love for him hit you with an intensity that felt like a physical blow to the gut.

He was gone, forever.

The memories flooded your mind—the sound of his voice, the echoes of laughter in the Red Keep's libraries, the sparkle in his violet eyes as you soared through the skies together.

Violent screams, unrecognisable even to yourself, reverberated across the still lake. Tears streamed down your face as you collapsed to your knees at the water's edge. Nettle's words echoed like a death knell, the cruel truth seeping into your soul:

"They couldn't retrieve a body."

He would never receive the burial befitting his noble lineage, never rest in the Great Sept with his ancestors.

Clutching the small wooden carving of Vhagar, you gripped it so tightly that it pierced your skin. Anything to distract from the sharp, agonising emptiness in your chest. The God's Eye, once a place of beauty, now mirrored the desolation within you—a stark reminder of the irreparable loss that had befallen your world.

It was night before you could wretch yourself away from the water’s edge, taking refuge in a large cave in the woods nearby, overlooking the Isle of Faces. Stepping into its deep interior, you were met with a pervasive dampness and bitter cold that clung to the air, accompanied by a low, wispy draft that whispered tales of undiscovered mysteries, cautioning against the disturbance of ancient stones better left untouched.

Guided by an inexplicable force that seemed to emanate from the recesses of your very heart, your feet carried you further into the cavern's depths. The very essence of the cave resonated with age and magic, invoking echoes of legends that spoke of the Children of the Forest and ancient tales of the First Men that had woven themselves into the fabric of these lands.

As you delved deeper, the surroundings cloaked you in an intensifying darkness, each step marked by the crumbling of wet gravel beneath your feet. Until suddenly, a strange warmth in the air began to prickle at your skin, humid and dank in a way that clung to you.

This was no ordinary hollow.

The pervading silence, almost otherworldly in its nature, gave way to an unsettling deep rumbling that resonated through the core of the earth beneath your feet. Turning a corner, the growling intensified, growing deeper and louder until a sudden realisation dawned upon you - a recognition etched in the core of your being.

The feeling was unmistakable, a sensation so familiar to you from a lifetime spent in the depths of the Dragon Pit.

Awe and trepidation mingled as the truth unfolded…

You stood in the majestic presence of a dragon.

#aemond targaryen #Aemond x oc #aemond targaryen x oc #fics by me #hotd #hotd fanfiction #house of the dragon #house of the dragon fanfiction #hotd angst #ewan mitchell #Aemond Targaryen x You

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voraciousvore · 5 months

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Candy and the Beanstalk

I wanted to write something light and silly and fluffy, since I've been writing so many dreadfully dark stories lately, so I put my OCs Candy Caramello and Martin Maneater into a classic beanstalk story. No actual vore in this one, just cute g/t fluff and some mild sfw romance. Enjoy (I hope)! :3

Word Count: 3.9k

They came from the sky, draped in remnants of clouds. Nobody knew how, or whence, or what they were, other than the fact that they vaguely resembled beans—beans with an exotic iridescent sheen, pulsing with a rainbow parade of luminescence. Upon their initial discovery, in a fallow dirt field, they drew considerable attention and curiosity. As obvious magical objects, they fetched a high price among buyers eager to discover their secrets.

Unfortunately, these buyers were soon disappointed to find that their fortunes had been wasted. Not a single person could get the beans to grow, nor could they extract any magical properties. The kaleidoscope of lights that displayed on their smooth surfaces gradually faded to a dull, lackluster brownish green, just like any other bean, with only the occasional spark of light to betray their original appearance. The mysterious beans from the sky soon faded into obscurity as people lost interest, deemed nothing more than a hoax or scam.

Out in the countryside, far away from the hustle and bustle of major townships, lived a humble peasant girl by the name of Candy Caramello. She was a very sweet and pretty girl, blessed with lovely blue eyes and long blonde hair, but she was also as dumb as a box of rocks. She lived with her parents on the family farm and worked as a milkmaid, with big milkers of her own to match. Regrettably, she wasn’t good for much else beyond the simplest tasks, especially with how clumsy and accident-prone she tended to be, so her parents didn’t have high hopes for her. She spent her days daydreaming about boys as she milked the cows and fed the animals.

One day, one of the older cows stopped producing milk. Candy brought this unfortunate news up to her mother. “Mom, the cow’s broken. Her udder’s all shriveled up.”

“Well, the cow’s of no use to us anymore. Take it to the market to sell it for its meat and hide,” her mother ordered.

“Really? Me?” Candy replied with surprise, twirling strands of her lustrous golden hair around her fingers. She usually wasn’t assigned much responsibility.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? She’s bound it muck it up,” her father whispered. Mrs. Caramello shushed him and sent her daughter on her way.

“She’s got to learn eventually,” her mom sighed, once she was out of earshot. “We can’t treat her like a baby forever.”

Candy skipped along the dirt path to town, excited for a new adventure as she led the cow by a rope. Her blue eyes sparkled with joy as she beheld the scenery: undulating fields of grain, majestic old oak trees, fresh green grass, fluffy white clouds glowing with sunshine. She walked over a stone bridge and watched fish dart around in the sparkling waters of the river below. The cow impatiently pulled on the rope to hurry her along.

She entered the market, and was immediately distracted by all the new sights and sounds and people. Stalls lined the streets bursting with fruits and vegetables, colorful textiles, hand-crafted goods, and a wide array of exotic baubles and trinkets. Candy forgot about selling the cow as she browsed goods that she had no money to buy.

“Hey, you! Wench!” a gravelly voice called from the entrance to a dark, deserted alley off to the side.

“Hmmm?” Candy turned her head and walked toward the sketchy area, oblivious to the potential danger.

“Is that cow for sale? How much?” the voice rasped. A shadowy figure, cloaked in midnight blue garments, crept out of the shade from the brick walls that hemmed in both sides of the narrow passage. He was a lean, tall man with a sickly mien.

“Ummm… what’s your best offer?” Candy inquired. She had no idea how much she was supposed to sell the cow for.

“I have something that might interest you…” A gnarled hand emerged from the folds of the cloak, holding a small drawstring bag full of small lumps. “Magic beans!” He opened the bag and pulled out a bean to show her. To Candy’s amazement, the bean flickered with light.

“Magic?” Candy’s eyes gleamed. “What do they do?”

The mysterious individual hesitated, as if not anticipating the question. “Uh… they’ll make you rich! Fabulously rich!” Candy looked at the stranger blankly. Money was fine and dandy, but not what her heart truly desired. Sensing her apathy, he changed tactics. “Or… they’ll help you find true love!”

Candy, being the hopeless romantic that she was, lit up. “Really? All that for a cow? Why? How?”

“Erm, don’t worry about that. Just, uh… follow your heart and look to the heavens and you’ll have your answer!”

Candy agreed to the deal, and traded the cow for the beans. As she left, the stranger muttered under his breath, too quiet to hear, “What a fool… those beans are useless…”

On her way home, Candy pawed through the bag and examined the beans. None of them had that special spark or sheen that she witnessed earlier, but she wasn’t deterred. She believed in the magic with all her heart. She couldn’t wait to plant them and see what would happen. Would they bloom with fantastic buds, opening to reveal a handsome prince? She nearly squealed with joy at the thought. She entered her cottage home just as the sun was beginning to set, bathing the landscape in orange twilight.

“Mom, Dad, look what I got for the cow!” Candy proclaimed, holding up the sack of beans triumphantly in her hand.

“What’s that? Gold coins?” Mr. Caramello asked.

“No, even better! I got beans! Magic beans!” Candy poured the beans into her hand so they could see. Her parents stared dumbly at the dull pile.

“Please… tell me you’re joking,” her mother uttered in disbelief. Candy gave a slight shake of her head, clueless. “Candy, you clod! You traded an entire cow for a handful of beans?”

She snatched all the beans out of Candy’s hand and threw them out the window. “Empty-headed simpleton! You got scammed! You wasted a perfectly good cow!”

“I told you this would happen,” her father muttered. Mrs. Caramello elbowed him hard in the side, making him grunt. Candy hung her head, dejected. She wanted to shrivel into the floorboards and disappear. She tried her hardest to please her folks, but somehow she always messed everything up. Her best was never good enough for them. She fought back tears.

“Ugh, just get out of my sight,” her mother said with a disgusted wave of her hand. Candy turned around with a despondent slouch and obeyed, dragging her feet out the door.

“Don’t you think you’re being too hard on her, dear?” Mr. Caramello murmured, once Candy was out of earshot. “She can’t help it that she’s so stupid.”

“I’m just sick of her being such an airhead! She needs to get her head out of the clouds and grow up!” Mrs. Caramello spat back with frustration.

Outside, Candy walked over to the beans scattered in the soil and plopped down on her knees. Sniffling, she scooped the beans up into her hands with some crumbs of dirt and gazed down at them sadly. They didn’t glow, stubbornly insisting on remaining a bland monochrome green. She poked her fingers in the dirt and scooped out a hole, then planted the beans and tucked them in with a pat of her hands. She kept her hands in place, sitting in the dirt as the sun sank below the horizon, quenching its fire into the earth. Her remaining energy died with the light.

With a laborious sigh, Candy went back inside the house, avoiding her parents and laying down in her bed to sleep. A trickle of melancholy dribbled into her core as she huddled on her side and stared at the wall. She was desperate to please; at the end of the day, she just wanted to be loved and held. She wanted a caring man, big and warm, to wrap his arms around her and tell her that she wasn’t useless. She wanted to feel precious and special, beloved and cherished, rather than being such a worthless disappointment. Candy shivered, pulling the bedsheets up to her chin, and fell asleep.

Little did she know that the beans, hidden beneath layers of earth, were radiating multicolored flashes. They had awakened from their long-dormant state with a burst of fire. Candy’s sweet touch had brought them to life. Like Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, Candy had something special that the magical beans patiently sought.

While she slept, a fresh green sprout emerged from the ground and reached for the sky, twisting and looping in a rapid ascension. Tendrils swirled in spirals and springs around each other as they lengthened and expanded in scale. Leaves grew from tender buds into magnificent foliage large enough to lay on like a mattress. The stalk thickened and swelled, transforming from a thin vine to a pillar to a massive verdant structure, broader and taller than the biggest redwood trees.

Candy woke up early, as was her habit, to let out the chickens and milk the cows. When she walked out the door into a dark shadow, she turned around to behold the gigantic beanstalk towering above her, above the house and surrounding countryside, impossibly tall, so high up that she couldn’t even see the top as it disappeared into the cloud layer. She stood there and gaped in astonishment, not believing her eyes. She wondered if she was still dreaming as she slowly stepped up to the plant and placed her palm on its glorious green surface. It was real. The magic was real.

She craned her head back to gaze up into the sky. The words of the bean seller popped into her head. Follow your heart and look to the heavens. When she initially heard those words, she thought he meant to pray for divine intervention, or have faith or strength of spirit. Now, however, the words took on a whole new meaning. Clearly, she was supposed to literally ascend to the sky, via the magical bridge created expressly for her.

The task before her was daunting, but Candy was firm with resolve. She dreamed, in her most honeyed fantasies, of finding true love. The ceaseless desire burned in her so strongly that she feared she would turn to ash if it were not satiated. She didn’t know what could possibly be in the sky that would aid her in her quest, but she was determined to find out. She took a deep breath to steady herself before beginning her journey. She gripped a coiled vine in her hand and started to climb.

At first, scaling the beanstalk was fun, reminiscent of a joyful childhood climbing trees. As the time stretched on, though, Candy’s optimism waned and her muscles began to ache. The labor became arduous. As the atmosphere thinned with the great height, the air chilled and the wind bit through her light clothes. The verdurous shoots of the beanstalk were soft and feathery in some parts, hard and sharp in others, digging into the skin on her hands. Whenever she grew weary, she rested on one of the many giant leaves. She didn’t want to stay in one place for too long, though, since she still had a long way to climb.

Candy considered giving up, but at some point she realized it would be just as hard to return to the ground far below. The distance was dizzying; Candy was just grateful she wasn’t afraid of heights. The beanstalk occasionally swayed in the breeze, making her cling with a death grip to the leafy vines until the stalk steadied again. When she needed a distraction, she admired the view. She could see for miles around. The farmland below, from such a grand height, looked flat, since none of the objects below could compare to the colossal twisting tower.

Candy entered the cloud layer, where the air was moist and frigid. The initial wisps of cloud thickened into heavy white puffs that produced dark shade. Candy was tempted to curl up when the cold ice particles surrounded her, and her hands met crusts of ice on the foliage, but she forced herself to continue. Finally, she emerged from the cloud layer, back into the brilliant sunshine.

Her eyes just about boggled out of her head when she surveyed the cloudscape around her. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t an entire alternate world up in the clouds. There were trees, and flowers, and a garden, and even a charming cottage close by. Candy cautiously tested the surface of the clouds and was surprised to find them pleasantly firm beneath her feet, like solid earth. She hopped off the beanstalk, stretched her weary arms, and headed towards the nearby cottage.

She immediately discerned that something was amiss as she grasped the true nature of her surroundings. The grass was tall, easily as tall as she was, and the flowers towered over her head. The trees stretched up into infinity, their branches and leaves fading into the blinding mist higher up. Candy gawked over a fallen acorn as big around as a barrel of ale as she walked past it. The cottage at first glance appeared close, since it was such an immense building, but was actually quite far away.

Candy faltered as she recognized just how shockingly huge everything was, especially the house. Who could possibly be large enough to inhabit such a vast structure? Fear flooded her heart, yet her curiosity and desire ultimately won out. She believed in the magic of the beans, even more so as she beheld such impossible, remarkable sights. She felt, in her heart, she was destined to come here—as the bean seller had promised her, to find love.

She cautiously approached the cottage, marveling at the inconceivable scale of it all. Up close, the house was so large that she couldn’t take it all in at once. She stumbled over some pits in the ground, failing to notice that the ridges taken as a whole formed a giant bootprint. She reached the door, which stretched hundreds of feet above her head, and gazed up at it in wonder. There was no way she’d be able to open it on her own, but she was small enough to crawl underneath it, through the gap between the door and the floor. She slipped inside, her heart racing.

The inside of the domicile would be rather average-looking, if not for the size. Candy found herself on a huge, scratchy welcome mat that nearly matched the square footage of her cow barn back home. She stepped over the threshold and onto a boundless stone floor. As she walked forward, with her diminutive shoes clicking on the stone, a tremendous masculine voice boomed from somewhere inside the house.

“FE!”

Candy stopped dead in her tracks at the enormous voice. The loud sound was followed up by a substantial thud, then another, and another, which Candy recognized as the rhythm of giant footsteps.

“FI!”

The steps rapidly approached, nearly knocking Candy over with how much they vibrated the floor. Her heart jumped into her throat. Logically, she knew she ought to run, but she was petrified in place.

“FO!”

The source of the disruption made his appearance, rounding a doorframe into the room. He was a giant man, hundreds of feet tall, with stormy gray eyes, short dark hair, and a sturdy build. He thundered toward little Candy, who was too stunned to move.

“FUM!”

His boot slammed down next to her. At her height, she wasn’t even tall enough to reach his ankle. He kneeled down, looming over her.

“I smell the blood of an Englishman!”

Candy gasped as a gigantic hand, with fingers thicker and longer than her entire body, overshadowed her. She finally snapped out of her paralytic state and turned to run, but she had no chance of escape as the fingers closed around her in a fist. She watched the floor drop away below as she was lifted up to the giant’s face so he could get a better look at her.

“Er... Englishwoman,” the giant corrected himself, once he was able to see her closer. Candy gazed up at his huge face, into his soft gray eyes. He had a prominent nose, full lips, and a forest of stubble around his mouth and chin. Other than his size, he didn’t look menacing or evil. As a matter of fact, Candy found him to be strikingly handsome. Perhaps even the most handsome man she had ever seen—the kind she fantasized about all day while she milked the cows, when she imagined her perfect man.

“Hmmm, I’m in the mood for a sandwich,” the giant rumbled to himself, standing up with the tiny woman in his fist. Candy wasn’t really listening to what he was saying. She was spellbound. She felt her face warm up with him so close, so huge, all around her. His fingers wrapped around her body as warmly as she pictured the arms of her fictional lover last night. Was this the man she was supposed to meet? Her true love? Sure, he was enormous, and not quite what she had expected, but true love conquers all, right?

The giant, oblivious to her thoughts, got out some slices of bread, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and condiments, and started prepping his sandwich. Humans weren’t common up in the sky, and he hadn’t eaten one in a long time, so he was looking forward to a rare treat. He thought it odd that she wasn’t struggling in his fist or pleading for her life, as humans normally did when he threatened to eat them. Maybe she was too frightened. She was shaking a bit, after all.

Candy rested her elbows on his finger and held her chin in her hands with a dreamy gaze. “What’s your name?” she asked.

The giant was confused by the question, and her placid demeanor, but dutifully replied, “Martin. Martin Maneater.” He paused midway through spreading sauce on his bread. “What about you?” Why am I asking this girl her name, when I’m just going to eat her anyway? To be polite?

She giggled, her face flushing at the attention. “Oh, I’m Candy. Candy Caramello! It’s lovely to meet you!” Martin blinked, increasingly baffled as he looked down at her. She wasn’t afraid of him at all. In fact, she had a rapturous look that was enthusiastic enough to make him blush. A woman had never looked at him quite like that before. And gosh, she was pretty cute too… just his type: blonde, blue-eyed, busty, and completely adorable.

“Um…” Martin suddenly found himself tongue-tied. What was wrong with him? He was supposed to eat her, not fawn over her! And yet… and yet… his heart was singing in his chest with a thrumming rapid enough to make him lightheaded. He abandoned his sandwich and sat down in a chair at the dining room table, loosening his grip on the little lady since she apparently wasn’t going to bolt.

With his mind drawing a blank, he asked the first question that popped into his head. “How did you get here, Candy?”

“Oh! I planted some magic beans and climbed a giant beanstalk! It was amazing!!” Candy chirped as she twisted a strand of golden hair around her finger. She caressed Martin’s giant finger with her other hand, reveling in how warm and soft his skin felt on hers. Martin blushed again at the physical contact. He liked it more than he cared to admit.

“Ah, the beans… that makes sense…” Martin muttered. “They only grow for special people, you know…”

“Is that so?” Candy said in a seductive tone, batting her eyes at him. Martin’s heart jumped as she twirled playfully in his loose fingers.

“Y-yeah… they only grow for a human of exceptional stock, one that is… especially tasty.” The giant raised a brow, curious to see how the woman would take this information.

She didn’t skip a beat. “Awww, so you think I’m tasty?” Candy flirted with a wink. The literal meaning of his words seemed to be lost on her. Martin couldn’t help but chuckle.

“I’m sure you are,” he teased back, running his tongue over his lips.

Candy’s eyes lingered on his lips longer than he felt comfortable, as he felt himself drooling over her scent. “The bean seller told me I could find true love with the magic of the beans!” she blurted out. Martin raised his eyebrows with surprise.

“Oh! Uh… hmmm… that’s interesting…” Martin stammered. What was he supposed to say to that?

“Can I kiss you?!” Candy’s abrupt intensity was shocking.

Martin reddened. “K-kiss me?”

“That’s how you find out if someone is your true love! You have to kiss them!” Candy insisted. “That’s how it works in the fairy tales!”

Martin’s tongue tripped over his words as he became increasingly flustered. He was about to deny her assertion, tell her love didn’t work that way, but… her little face and body, resting in his hand, made his chest swell. He wanted to kiss her, badly. He was lonely, living in the clouds all by himself. He wanted a woman to love, to call his own, and here she was, literally sitting in the palm of his hand, begging for his affection. How could he possibly refuse?

“O-okay. Sure. Yeah.” His heart pounded in his chest as he raised her up to his lips. He was tempted to scoop her up into his mouth, being the man-eating giant that he was, but he politely refrained and puckered his lips gently. He pressed his plush lips to her tiny body, feeling every soft curve she had to offer. She kissed him back, her touch light and soft. He could feel her excited heartbeat pulsing in her chest. He pinned her down in his palm with rising ardor as he leaned into the sensual kiss. He could even taste her incredible caramel sweetness as his tongue touched her body. She was divine. His entire body burned with a sudden fiery passion that radiated from her touch on his lips all the way down to his toes.

He could hardly tear himself away when he finished kissing her. He craved more. She lay flat on her back in his palm, hot and slightly soggy, her cheeks red as a rose and her eyes glistening with stars. She looked like a tiny angel.

“I-I think you’re the one, Martin,” she uttered breathlessly. “That was amazing.”

“Mmmmm, I agree,” Martin purred, caressing her body tenderly with his finger. He couldn’t believe his luck. He leaned down for another kiss, this one short and sweet but no less passionate. “Who knew a human woman could make me feel this way...”

Martin cupped her in his hands and took her into his living room. He reclined on the couch and relaxed, holding the tiny woman against his chest. As he drifted off for a nap, he hoped in his heart that this whole encounter wasn’t all just a dream, and the tiny woman in his hands was, in fact, real. Before he closed his eyes, he looked down at her, snuggled up in the curve of his palm on his chest, rocking slightly with every beat of his heart. She was so trusting, already fast asleep in his hand after a long and exhausting day of climbing.

Maybe true love was real after all.

Writing Masterpost

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rolloollor · 20 days

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Thoughts about Bound by Briar

It's time once again for me to ramble about what happens after a fic is over!

This is one of the few chaptered fics I've written that doesn't have an epilogue chapter. Sacerdos also doesn't have one, but Dark Fire/From the Ashes and Dyed Dark as Night (as well as the upcoming vampire AU) do. To be honest with you, I struggled with this ending. I wrote like two or three variations before going for this one, which I felt was more fun and more… in character. Plus, I think it offers something the endings in other fics of mine don't, which is also important to me.

Anyway, onto my thoughts.

So, what happens next?

Well, the dynamic between Malleus and Rollo is shifting even further. Pet/owner to vassal and suzerain to... something else. It may look like Malleus has the power from the outside looking in, but he's ceding more and more of it over time. Rollo knows he has an immense amount of sway when it comes to Malleus and he isn't interested in giving that up. He really has nothing else: he can't go home, he can't avenge Jehan (because he can't destroy magic), so what remains? Malleus. Thus, Rollo will dig his claws into him as deeply as possible. In fact… I'd say that this Rollo would (eventually) even accept being transformed into a fae like in DDAN so that he won't have to relinquish Malleus.

Though, I will say, when Rollo figures out what the magestone ring Malleus gave him does he's going to flip the fuck out. He hardly uses magic, so I don't think he'd notice for a while, especially if the main magic he uses is attuned to him (the flames) and thus produces a miniscule amount of blot. I could have covered his eventual discovery in this fic, but I just didn't want to. It'd cascade into a lot of complicated stuff outside the scope of a weird unhealthy romance story. Whether or not Malleus/the fae will agree to maybe start disseminating these magestone rings to humans, that's an issue. I could see Malleus agreeing (purely because Rollo wants it), but will the queen? Maybe they'll start a smuggling operation… Like, they acquire the stones, slip them to the Queendom, and then the Queendom surges in power and dominates the other countries. Lots of consequences here. Maybe other countries will attack the fae in earnest to get their hands on the stones? Talk about a mess. But it would be funny if the Shaftlands, having sacrificed ships and manpower basically to fuck mages over, find themselves significantly weakened in this new magic-safe(r) world. Whoops! Eat shit!

Another key question I imagine some people might have is: does Rollo love Malleus? I think he does, in a way. But it's warped. Not only does he know he has the upper hand (as in, Malleus loves Rollo more than Rollo loves Malleus), but it's not like Rollo got to choose Malleus over everyone else--he has no other options. He's definitely attracted to him, of course. I just think that there's no starting from 0 with Rollo, he will always remember how their relationship started and how Malleus treated him. His love for Malleus is possessive and at least partially born out of survival. When that threat fades in his memory, he'll chill out some. But he'll never forget.

Will Malleus and Rollo have kids? Maybe. I think Rollo would be into the idea after a few years since it would give him another purpose in life (not to mention it would mean claiming Malleus even further). But I also think that Rollo would have to accept being a concubine. A concubine who's also a vassal...

What if Malleus has to take a fae wife? Rollo would manipulate Malleus as hard as he possibly can, ensuring that he spends little time with her. Maybe to the point that he has 0 legitimate children and instead has a handful with Rollo. I do like the idea of things getting extra fucked up because of the introduction of a wife, but it also makes me sad, so. Whoever this lady is, she doesn't deserve the horrible schemes Rollo would cook up. Best case scenario, Malleus tells her something like, "Look, I'm in love with my human, so this marriage is purely for show/the alliance/whatever. Appear at official events with me, but otherwise we shouldn't spend much time together. We likely won't even consummate this marriage." Hopefully she's cool with that. We wouldn't want any competition between heirs, now, would we... And well, it would be a nice sort of vengeance for Rollo to 'taint' the royal bloodline forever.

The gargoyles become good friends with Malle, but Rollo won't let him hang around them more than he deems necessary. Rollo visits them maybe more often because he does the cleaning.

All in all, they basically make each other worse. Rollo isolates Malleus from others while Malleus is content to get the majority, if not all, of his emotional needs met by Rollo. Meaning the threat of him leaving/dying is huge and one Malleus won't be able to bear in the future. Rollo accomplishes none of his initial goals and lives a life that is, no matter what, ultimately up to the whims of Malleus and the other fae. The whole 'human expert' thing is a job Malleus made for him, more or less. And he'll never see Fleur City ever again. He has little to worry about regarding Malleus' affection... for now. Something, or someone, could happen at any time, so he'll have to be vigilant.

Not quite a bad end, not quite a good end. They'll stay together in a codependent relationship until one of them dies.

Some of you may be curious as to the other endings I tried out. Well, in one, I was going to have Rollo accept Trey's offer and stealthily head to the docks. I thought about having him turn back on his own or having Malleus confront him there. It felt... predictable? Played out, maybe? It just didn't work for me. Another version involved Rollo reading the letter with Malleus in the room, with him learning about the content and, of course, freaking out. I also wrote a thing where Rollo and Malleus ride a horse (Rollo at the reins, Malleus behind him) together, but I can't remember where that was supposed to go. A lot of unused chunks... I even wrote out a scene where Rollo actually was leading the diplomacy effort and talking with Trey and company in their little house tree, but it deviated a lot from mallerollo time and I went, "Would anyone want to read this...?" and scrapped it. Plus I don't think it makes a ton of sense for the fae to entrust that job to Rollo so quickly.

Maybe some of those failed endings sound more appealing than what I went with, but they simply weren't working out. When I've written something and I keep avoiding continuing it, like I'll reread it and go "ugh" and do something else, that's how I know it isn't going to happen. Procrastination's normal, but I should want to continue a particular scene and it shouldn't be like pulling teeth. And if I do force myself to write something I'm not into, it'll be of lesser quality. Basically.... if I'm not having fun writing it, no one will have any reading it.

If anyone has any questions about the story or anything really, I'd be happy to answer. I know the pacing of the last few chapters was a bit speedy... so I wouldn't be surprised if there were aspects that people found confusing.

#mallerollo #rllr fanfic ponderings

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yiddishknights · 1 year

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At this point, I think many people know that I’m writing my thesis on Vidvilt, an Arthurian romance written in Old Yiddish in the 15th century. In 1671, the first print edition of the story was produced in Amsterdam under the title אײן שין מעשה פון קיניג ארטיש הוף (“A Fine Tale of King Arthur’s Court”), and this served as a the source text for several later printings. Earlier this week, I got to look at this edition printed by Johann Christoph Wagenseil in 1699. Wagenseil was a Christian Hebraist, part of a movement of Christians who learned Hebrew for religious reasons. His is a bilingual Yiddish-German edition, created with the belief that German-speaking Christians could use Yiddish as a stepping stone toward learning Hebrew.

Interestingly, the Yiddish and German versions of the text are not perfectly synched in this printing, with the German text running several pages longer than the Yiddish, which makes me wonder how effective it really was as a tool for learning Yiddish. However, the book is also full of supplementary material, including a brief history of the Jews, a Hebrew grammar, and some background information about the history of the King Arthur legend.

#Medieval #Judaism #Arthuriana #Yiddish #German

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formulaorange · 1 year

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2023 Spring Anime

This season looks whack. There's so many notable series, there's definitely something for everyone this season. Of course starting off with the big ones:

Demon Slayer Season 3 - The Swordsmith Village Arc

Attack on Titan: The Final Season The Final Chapters

Dr Stone Season 3

While those all look amazing and all:

Bocchi is back baby!!!

Season 2 of Ranking of Kings is back this season. Their story telling is top tier and if you didnt' check out the first season, now is the time to do so.

All these amazing new seasons to look forward to, but this season doesn't stop there, the new series set to debut look absolutely killer too:

Hell's Paradise gets it's anime release, produced by MAPPA of course. This is definitely my most anticipated for the season.

Followed by MASHLE. While I had fun with the manga, I ultimately couldn't get past the art style. The anime should complete the picture for me and this will definitely be one of the top comedy series this season.

Lastly for the big name debut series: Oshi no Ko

This series takes a second to get into but it's taken the manga world by storm and has already gotten its english translations with only 11 japanese releases so far. The story is definitely worth sticking around for and will likely be one if not the top show of the season.

Additional continuing series:

Golden Kamuy S4

Edens Zero S2

The Ancient Magus' Bride S2

KonoSuba - Spin Off Series

As for some lesser known series, I've gone through this seasons' release schedule and filtered through the trailers to pick out the ones that might be worth watching... I honestly wasn't expecting for there to be so many. So like I said, there's definitely something for everyone this season.

Heavenly Delusion

I'm such a sucker for adventure series, throw in sci-fi and I'm hooked. While this definitely gives me Made in Abyss and Promised Neverland vibes, I'm not sure it'll be on the same level.

So far episode 1 looks absolutely amazing. Post-apocalyptic world with the contrast of the two stories, one of kids inside a sanctuary with little outside world knowledge and the kids that live and survive outside. Definitely worth watching.

A Galaxy Next Door

I'm surprised this is even being aired already. I swear the english volumes for the manga just released earlier this year. I've heard mixed things about the series but I think this'll be worth checking out.

Skip to Loafer

I've heard so much about this series and it's honestly got the golden trio of tags. It's a Slice of life comedy romance and the style and characters are so cute. I'll definitely be giving this a full watch through.

Insomniacs after School

This kind of looks like an irl version of Call of the Night but after watching the trailers a bit more it still looks like a lot of fun. It's about these two students who're unable to sleep and what they do when they stay up. They end up joining the astronomy club and overall it looks like it'll be a really pretty and relaxing series.

Dead Mount Death Play

Most manga collectors will have heard of this series. It's supposed to be quite a decent thriller/supernatural series. While I haven't had a chance to read through it, I think it's about time we got another good supernatural show. I'll definitely be checking it out.

Magical Destroyers

This straight up looks like utter chaos. Whether that's good or not I guess we'll find out. It's under the mahou shoujo tag?? but it's about a radical group that is trying to eliminate the otaku culture from Japan. This guy "Otaku Hero" stands up and tries to stop them. It sounds wild and kind of looks like a passion project. I'll give it 3 episodes.

My Home Hero

This is straight up a western drama movie. Similar vibes to Taken this guy kills his daughters yakuza boyfriend and gets caught up in the criminal underground. It's definitely a new trope for anime so I'll be giving it 5 episodes.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury S2

While technically this is a continuation of a series, I feel like many people didn't watch the first half unless they were already into gundam. I never grew up with it and truthfully I just lumped it in with transformers so I never checked it out.

Lots of people have been saying that this reboot it really solid and a good way to get into the series. After watching the trailer I totally understand, the characters all look great and the story looks like a solid sci-fi series. I'll definitely be watching to catch up to the new releases.

Yuri Is My Job

I've head of this series all over the place in the manga world and I know it's one of the more popular shoujo ai. Essentially it seems the plot is that these 2 girls end up working together at a themed cafe and start falling for each other. I don't really have any interest in shoujo ai series (frankly i just started getting into romance series in general) so I'll give it 3 episodes and see how it goes.

The Dangers in My Heart

This is one of those - unlikely mc's gets attention from the pretty love interest. After watching the first episode I can say it definitely isn't the same as the others. The girl is super weird and I like his commentary of all the shit he does. Pretty fun and worth a try at least.

Loving Yamada at Lv999

This looks like a fun lighthearted romance. I'll give it 5 episodes.

Otaku Elf

Pretty much as the title says it's about an Otaku Elf. I think this hoenstly looks like a fun series and as long as you're not looking for more plot, it'll be a good time.

Blue Orchestra

While I think a decent number of people will like the series, I know for sure I'll drop it due to the cgi. I just feel that CGI isn't at the stage where it feels natural enough with the rest of the animations and it really takes away from my watching experience.

My god. I had no clue they redid this but I'll 100% be watching this now lol. They rebooted Tokyo Mew Mew.

This was one of the first anime I watched growing up.

The second season is airing this season - Tokyo Mew Mew New S2

in case anyone else grew up watching it and wats to catch up.

And of course, the isekais.

We've now evolved from just the standard isekais to isekais with a twist.

I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, too.

I'll give it 3 episodes but unsurprisingly I don't think i'll stick with it.

The Legendary Hero is Dead!

This looks a little different from the ususal, I'll give it 3 episodes.

Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

This is a full send fantasy shoujo romance and I thought I had had enough of the royal isekai trope but apparently not. The cheese of the romance has sucked me in again with the pretty animations to top it off. I'll be giving it a good 3 episodes.

The Ecchi series for the season:

KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World

This honestly looks like fun but I've had my fair share of this kind of show. This is a fantasy ecchi isekai comedy. I'll still give it 3 episodes.

Megami no Cafe Terrace

Frankly I have no interest in ecchi harem series like this but the quality looks decent so I've added it here for those who want something to watch along those lines this season.

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mediawhorefics · 1 year

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✨📚 fav reads of the year 2022 edition

brokeback mountain // annie proulx ➡️ short story | romance | lgbt+ | 1960s

angels in america // tony kusher ➡️ theatre | lgbt+ | 1980s | hiv-aids

the normal heart // larry kramer ➡️ theatre | lgbt+ | 1980s | hiv-aids

bent // martin sherman ➡️ theatre | lgbt+ | 1930s | nazi germany

parfumerie // miklós lászló ➡️ theatre | 1930s | two retail coworkers who can't stand each other have yet to realise they've been falling in love with each other through anonymous letters.

the charm offensive // alison cochrun ➡️ romance | lgbt+ | tv reality inspired | discussions of mental health | dev is a helpless romantic who works as a producer on a bachelor-like reality tv show. when the show casts disgraced tech billionaire charlie, he couldn’t be further from the perfect prince charming the show needs. and yet, as dev helps him open up to the female contestants on the show, the two develop a strong bond that makes charlie question his sexuality and dev his professional ethic.

the binding // bridget collins ➡️ romance | historical fantasy | 19th c. | lgbt+ | santalone | in a world where books are dangerous objects containing people's painful memories they want to get rid of, emmet farmer is sent to become an apprentice to the local bookbinder after he had some sort of mental collapse.

the house in the cerulean sea // tj klune ➡️ fantasy | lgbt+ | contemporary | found family | standalone | 40 yo caseworker linus baker is given a special secret assignment to check out an orphanage of supposedly particularly dangerous magical children. linus has been a rule follower and someone who doesn't want to rock the boat his whole life, but the children and their caretaker make him reconsider previously held beliefs.

a marvellous light // freya marske ➡️ romance | lgbt+ | historical fantasy | edwardian england | himbo/bookworm pairing | robin blyth gets thrown into an unknown world of magic when a clerical error sees him filling the post of liaison between the regular world and a hidden magical society. there’s a lot to untangle: his predecessor disappeared under mysterious circumstances, his counterpart in the magical bureaucracy is prickly and cold, and he just got cursed for information he most definitely does not possess.

the bedlam stacks // natasha pulley ➡️ romance | lgbt+ | historical fantasy | 19th c. | magical realism | standalone | merrick tremayne is called upon by the india office to go on a dangerous expedition deep in peru to fetch quinine (essential for the treatment of malaria) despite the debilitating injury that almost cost him a leg. every expedition before his has yielded no results apart from dead bodies, but merrick has family history deep in the country so he goes against his better judgement. there, he meets raphael, a priest surrounded by strange stories of disappearances, cursed woods and living stones, and who might hold the key to his family's past.

i kisssed shara wheleer // casey mcquiston ➡️ ya fiction | romance | contemporary | lgbt+ | a month before graduation, chloe green's academic rival shara kisses her before disappearing. now, chloe is on a hunt for answers alongside unlikely allies.

the other merlin // robyn schneider ➡️ ya fiction | fantasy | arthuriana | retelling | bbc merlin meets a knight's tale but make it gay | years after her father's, legendary court wizard merlin, disappearance, emry takes her far less talented twin brother's place when he is summoned to camelot to train and become prince arthur's right hand wizard. studying magic properly is everything she hoped for, but posing as her brother isn't as easy as it seems. not to mention those sparks that are flying between her and arthur.

book lovers // emily henry ➡️ romance | contemporary | enemies to lovers | nora stephens is a big city cutthroat literary agent, the opposite of a laid-back, small-town, lovable romance novel heroine. which is why her sister drags her to the picturesque town setting of one of nora's client's books for a month-long holiday/life makeover. of course, once she's there she runs into charlie lastra, a no-nonsense book editor she knows (and loathes) from nyc.

v for vendetta // alan moore ➡️ graphic novel | science fiction | dystopia | alternate history | in a future british dystopian society, a shadowy freedom fighter, known only by the alias of "V", plots to overthrow the tyrannical government - with the help of a young woman.

time is a mother // ocean vuong ➡️ poetry | lgbt+

dracula // bram stoker ➡️ horror | gothic fiction | 19th c. | y'all know what this is about.

brotherhood // mike chen ➡️ star wars | anakin & obi-wan adventure set right after aotc

master & apprentice // claudia gray ➡️ star wars | qui-gon & obi-wan adventure set before tpm

padawan // kiersten white ➡️ star wars | 16 yo obi-wan heads out on his own for a solo mission in the midst of doubts about his master. and his pace in the order.

#books #book rec #lit stuff #about me

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blogger360ncislarules · 28 days

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Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, the spinoff of the recently concluded Young Sheldon, which was a spinoff of The Big Bang Theory, is an opportunity for producers to tell new stories involving Georgie Cooper (Montana Jordan) and his wife Mandy (Emily Osment), the older brother and sister-in-law of Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage, Jim Parsons) now that his tales have been chronicled.

TV Insider caught up with executive producer/head writer Steve Holland, Jordan, and Osment on the Paramount lot at a press event to kick off the new Fall TV season to preview the CBS sitcom, which will appear both familiar and new to viewers.

“There wasn’t a grand plan behind it,” Holland tells us about why the characters of Georgie and Mandy were chosen to be spun off from Young Sheldon. He says the idea came about after the producers, including series creator Chuck Lorre, watched the two actors and saw their delightful chemistry.

“They were just so much fun to watch,” Holland says. “We were like, ‘We want to watch these characters more.’ It was born out of that.”

While this is Jordan’s second series for Lorre, Osment has done quite a few for the genius hitmaker. Her first job with him was when she was 17 and she appeared in an episode of Two and a Half Men, titled, ironically, “Bazinga! That’s From a TV Show.”

Next came parts on Mom and The Kominsky Method. Initially, she was hired for a lone episode of Young Sheldon as Mandy, a former local TV weathergirl who fell into an unlikely “May-September early August” romance with Georgie. That turned into many more, and now, she’s starring in Georgie & Mandy. “You can’t plan your life when Chuck Lorre gets in the way,” Osment says with a smile. “I’m so excited.”

“When we first cast Emily, it was a one-off,” Holland says. “We had a thought of Georgie dating an older woman, and we cast Emily, whom Chuck loves working with. She’s great. We brought her back for another episode and then another.”

Holland and Osment are happy to be returning to the multi-camera format after working on Young Sheldon’s single camera style of shooting. It’ll also be refreshing to tell stories with characters whose future lives aren’t etched in stone quite the way Sheldon’s was.

“We know Sheldon grows up, has friends, gets married, and wins a Nobel Prize,” Holland says. “So, there were [some] constraints around the stories we could tell. Now, there’s [more of a] clean slate. We don’t know much about Georgie. We know a little bit about the tire entrepreneurship, but we don’t know much [beyond that].

“It seems like there’s a whole world of stories that we can tell,” the exec adds. “We get to bring in new characters – [some] that people already know. But we get to tell entirely brand-new stories, and the show can go anywhere we decide to take it.”

Holland adds that shooting in front of a live studio audience will help “separate Georgie & Mandy from Young Sheldon so it doesn’t feel like we’re just doing Young Sheldon Season 7.5. We want to make it feel like its own show and stand on its own. We’ve missed doing audience shows.”

Jordan is not as familiar with multi-camera work but he’s got his TV wife to provide support. “I’ve got someone by my side who’s going to give me some pointers,” the actor says.

And not that the show needs any lucky omens, but it will be filmed on The Big Bang Theory stage on the Warner Bros. lot.

Georgie & Mandy has a rich legacy of characters it can draw from, given that there’s lore not only from Young Sheldon but The Big Bang Theory, too. “Right now,” Holland says, “our concern is Emily and Montana, and Will Sasso and Rachel Bay Jones as her parents [Jim and Audrey].”

That said, Holland says, “[Georgie and Mandy] still live in Medford [Texas], and I think we’re going to see familiar faces from time to time.”

Does that mean we might see a Meemaw (Annie Potts) on occasion? “We might see a Meemaw,” Holland responds with a smile.

Who we may not be seeing – or at least hearing – is grown-up Georgie, played by Jerry O’Connell. Parsons narrated episodes of Young Sheldon but as Georgie & Mandy is multi-camera, the format doesn’t easily call for voiceovers from characters’ future selves. But older Georgie’s player is a familiar face to the series stars.

“I was excited when I met him,” Jordan says of meeting his TV older self. “We had just gotten back from a skiing trip. My face was all sunburn and chapped. Jerry’s a nice guy, really down to earth.”

“He played my dad on Young & Parents,” Osment says, “and now, he’s my…future baby-daddy husband.”

Might Osment do someone singing on Georgie & Mandy? The actress is also a singer. “I go by @bluebiirdmusic with my music and I have another single coming out next month,” she says. “Georgie has done some singing to our daughter on the show.”

Quips Jordan, “I sing…in the shower.”

#georgie and mandy's 1st marriage #young sheldon

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always-andromeda · 2 years

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How Dano Characters Would Play Stardew Valley Part II | Dano!Characters x GN!Reader

Dano!Characters x GN!Reader

Author's Note | we got part two up in here! this concept is so fun to me so I hope that y'all enjoy the lighthearted content! I promise I am still working on my milestone requests (y'all would not believe how many requests I actually got oh my gosh) but I just wanted to break it up with this fun little thing!!

Warnings | slight spoilers for Stardew Valley? overall, this is pure fluff!

✰ Joby Taylor ✰

First of all, you'd have to force Joby to play the game. He'd roll his eyes at the cutesy graphics and write it off as just a time waster. But he'd get sucked in and get super invested in it.

Joby doesn't really like farming. He isn't good at it. And he has a hard time budgeting out his money to buy the proper amount of seeds. He also isn't great with planning ahead and has absolutely planted seeds a few days before the turn of the season and gets surprised when they all die.

But he loves planting wheat. It grows fast and then he can turn them into beer. He gets really good at the brewing aspect and regularly sells the spoils of his keg collection and gets rich that way.

He dates literally every single bachelor and bachelorette and gets both the scenes with the boys and the girls where they all slut shame him. He gets so pissed off that none of the marriage candidates will talk to him the week afterwards.

When he builds up his friendship levels again, he has a hard time choosing between Sebastian and Abigail. He alternates between both, marrying one, staying with them for about a year, divorcing them, and then marrying the other. He erases his ex's memory and proceeds to romance them all over again. He has absolutely no remorse for this.

Joby chooses a dog as his pet. Surprisingly, he gets very attached to the dog. He’d name the dog after some rock legend like Kurt, Sid, or Mick. That dog is basically the only creature he bothers to care for in the entire game.

Oh. And yeah. He absolutely sells out to Joja Corporation purely because he thinks it's funny and doesn't want to have to gather all the goods for the community center.

✰ Louis Ives ✰

Louis would adore the concept of this game but would be a fairly casual player. They're not super intense on farming or mining. But they love decorating the farm and the house.

They memorize the pathing of each NPC so they can build around their pathing in town. They decorate with all sorts of greenery and stone pathing and spend lots of time switching out decor to match with the passing seasons. Louis has the prettiest version of Pelican Town on their save file.

Louis makes friends with all of the townies so quickly. They're good at memorizing all of the birthdays and setting aside presents to give everyone.

When deciding between a dog and a cat for their pet, Louis chooses a cat. And they’d name it some sort of feminine human name like Lily or Claire.

Louis has so much fun with making clothes. The second Emily gives them the sewing machine, Louis is spending all of their gold on getting a barn full of sheep so they can continually be producing wool to make into fabric.

They will combine basically every item they possibly can with fabric to see what sort of clothing it would make. And they make a deliberate effort to wear every single article of clothing possible.

They would marry Emily. Emily was the girl who introduced them to sewing, which is what initially gets them interested. She's just so unique and fun and it keeps them on their toes.

When Emily gives their character the Magic outfit, Louis will try and incorporate at least one piece into their outfit at all times.

They venture into the mines (even though they absolutely suck at combat) just to find minerals to give to Emily.

✰ Percy Dolarhyde ✰

Percy is the biggest brat with this game. He isn't even good at the game in the slightest. Which is probably the most frustrating thing of all for him.

He can't even try to flex being good at any of the mechanics. Catching fish? He loses them all. Farming? Boring. Combat? Terrible.

Percy gets knocked out every single time he goes into the mine and loses half of his items. Or he loses track of time and passes out at 2 AM and ends up getting mugged. This angers him immensely.

This man is the only person in the world who could develop rage over a game like Stardew Valley. He isn't good at it and doesn't understand it and this upsets him a lot more than it should.

Percy doesn't care about forming genuine friendships with characters. He'd marry random villagers and then divorce them for just the drama of it all. Hell, he'll randomly give trash to villagers just to see their reactions.

Just like in real life, no one likes Percy.

He gets heavily attached to the dog and the horse you can eventually get. He probably calls the dog Copper and names the horse Dusty. Truly, those are the only characters (are they even really characters though?) that he can even slightly form a real bond with.

Needless to say, someone is absolutely putting a few bullets through their Nintendo Switch before whining to their father to get them another one.

✰ Pierre Bezukhov ✰

Pierre gets super invested very quickly. Especially with farming. He's terribly useless in the mines, of course. But he tries his best. If he's playing multiplayer with someone else, he'll sacrifice himself in the most dramatic fashion if any monsters attack.

On farming: Pierre is so diligent with it. He does all of the math for how many crops he can manage to grow in a season. He doesn't care too much about profits, however. The joy of planting seeds and watching them slowly grow into pixel fruits and veggies fulfills him more than any amount of money ever could.

He's super attentive to the crops and will insist upon watering them all himself instead of just using the sprinklers.

Pierre loves the animals and chooses a cat for his pet. He’d name it some stereotypical cat name like Whiskers or Mittens. He’s a simple man and when he sees a pixel cat, he can’t help but be smitten.

This man marries Penny, of course. Pierre loves her kindness but also loves her dedication to kids and having a family. When she offers to decorate the bedroom, he chooses the Forest and Moon theme.

Pierre can fully embrace the slice of life narrative and doesn’t get bored by it. He could literally waste hours away on this game between building up his farm and discovering what the world has to offer. He takes the most time to technically “finish” the game because he really cares about exploring every aspect.

✰ Seth ✰

Seth goes into this game with one goal in mind: making as much money as possible. And he means business. He will try any and every money making tactic in the game.

He isn't great with farming though. Not for a lack of trying, either. He just simply forgets about his crops. He's constantly forgetting to water them and ends up accidentally letting them die.

This man has a thing for pyrotechnics and will always be using bombs in the mines to get through the levels. This is where he gets a lot of his riches. He goes the route of getting diamonds and making dozens upon dozens of Crystalariums so he can duplicate diamonds forever.

Seth is also pretty good at fishing, surprisingly. When he can focus on it, he can get sucked into wasting an in-game day standing on the dock at the beach, just casting his line while using the Treasure Hunter so he can get extra gems while fishing.

Before too long, Seth fills up his farm with four separate sheds, each filled with Crystalariums that are all hard at work. On the days where they're all finished duplicating, he just waltzes through each shed and mutters to himself, "Time for daddy's payday..."

If he needs any ores or wood or stone, he's not harvesting it himself. He buys all of his supplies at this point.

Seth doesn't get married! He isn't letting himself get tied down in both the real and virtual world. But he does flirt with every one of the bachelorettes. Of course he does.

He gets slut shamed by all of the bachelorettes and he's kind of bitter about it. But he gets over it quickly and moves on.

His biggest achievement? Being able to place the Gold Clock on his farm.

✰ Simon Feck ✰

Simon is unabashedly in love with this game. He likes playing video games in his spare time anyways, but this one is intriguing to him because of the wholesome themes and because it literally never ends.

He doesn't get too into interacting with the other characters. He just loves automating his farm.

The day he gets the enrichers that spread fertilizer automatically? He's in paradise. He places Junimo huts everywhere so that they can do everything for him.

This man absolutely mods his game. Simon gets obsessed with adding random expansions packs that give him extra crops to mess with, extra NPCs, and extra locations.

He's not great at connecting with the NPCs so he tends to look towards the wiki for help on knowing what to do and which gifts to give who, though he is very secretive about this and will get offended if anyone even implies that he's not being a purist.

Simon falls head over heels for Maru. It takes him a while to get there, but he eventually marries her and adores the fact that there's an NPC who's just as into science and technology as he is.

✰ Timothy Klitz ✰

Klitz also mods his game. But the mods he uses are mostly cosmetic. He definitely uses the one that changes the villager portraits to anime style portraits.

He’s also a huge video game purist so he really tries to toe the line between keeping his experience as true to the original as possible while also making his game prettier to look at. He’s a sucker for a mod that puts a good filter over the whole game.

He also chooses a cat for his pet. He’s allergic to dogs in real life and he’s dragging that with him into the virtual setting. He’d choose the orange cat and would name it Garfield just for the fun of it.

Klitzy is madly in love with Hayley. He thinks she's the prettiest bachelorette in town and it absolutely breaks his heart when she bullies him.

When her birthday comes around in Spring, he gives her the only thing in his inventory, a dandelion. And when she says, “It's my birthday and you give me this? Is this some kind of joke?” He is in mourning. He will quit the game and restart the day just so he won't have to deal with that lowering his friendship level with her.

He takes it personal when she rejects him at the Flower Dance. Even if you explain that he just needs to have at least four hearts with her, he is absolutely insulted.

It takes him so long to actually figure out what gifts she likes to receive because he's dead set on not checking the wiki. He considers it cheating and takes the purity of his gameplay experience very seriously.

He's actually good at fishing. Big shocker, but he has the patience and the reflexes to actually catch every fish fairly quickly. He also likes keeping them in fish tanks; he has so many fish tanks littered throughout his house and his sheds.

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womanexile · 11 months

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Kinda curious...

How Harry Styles Became the World’s Most Wanted Man

Rolling Stone Magazine

BY BRITTANY SPANOS

"In person, Styles looks more like your best friend’s cute, sporty older brother than the gender-bending style icon he’s become. He’s left the boas and sequin jumpsuits in the dressing room, opting instead for a blue Adidas track jacket, gym shorts, and Gucci sneakers. His hair, often described as “tousled,” like he’s a renegade prince in a romance novel, is clipped back with a hair claw, a signature day-off accessory. "

"Those post-Wembley showers were especially gratifying. When One Direction, which Styles casually refers to as “the band,” played the stadium in 2014, he ended up with tonsillitis on the day of the show. “I was miserable,” he recalls. “We played the first one, and I remember I came off, got in the car, and just started crying because I was so disappointed.”

rollingstone.com/music/music-features/harry-styles-harrys-house-dont-worry-darling-my-policeman-cover-1397290/

Lol, her HS description- on purpose? Same person taught TS NYU class too. Pics nice.

Taylor Swift Course Launched at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute

Varety Magazine

BY Jem Aswald

02.22.2022

New York University’s Clive Davis Institute has introduced its first-ever course on Taylor Swift, which launched on Jan. 26 and continues through March 9.

"Taught by Rolling Stone’s Brittany Spanos, the class will cover Swift’s evolution as a creative music entrepreneur, the legacy of pop and country songwriters, discourses of youth and girlhood, and the politics of race in contemporary popular music, according to a rep for the program, who noted that the course has a long waitlist. Swift has been invited to speak to class, although the status of that request is still pending.

Chaired by veteran music writer and musician Jason King, the Davis Institute has included classes taught by Questlove,“Dilla Time” author Dan Charnas, Q-Tip, legendary producer-engineer Bob Power and many others."

She also provided the NYU transcript

Read Taylor Swift’s Inspiring Speech for NYU’s Class of ’22

"Today, you leave New York University and then you go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I," superstar says at Yankee Stadium

BY BRITTANY SPANOS

rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-nyu-speech-1355121/

Rolling Stone journalists know a lot more than what they write. They see the things we don’t. But they’ll keep an artist trust so that artists will continue to work with them.

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justforbooks · 1 year

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The path from successful character actor to becoming a star is difficult. It’s even harder when you’re self-destructive. Tom Sizemore, who has died aged 61 after a brain aneurysm, will be best remembered for his roles in Saving Private Ryan, as Tom Hanks’s wise sergeant, and in Heat, as the muscle in Robert De Niro’s bank-robbing crew.

His characters were often informed by their volatility: affable nihilism could explode into violence, which made him a natural player of bent cops and detectives, as believable in straight roles as in over-the-top variations, such as Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. But his own personality bore many of those same traits. His career was sidelined repeatedly by addictions to heroin and methamphetamines, and his peripatetic drug-fuelled sex life led to repeated cases of domestic violence.

In 1998, after starring as the criminal gangster boss John Gotti in the television film Witness to the Mob, Sizemore received a visit from De Niro and his mother, who forced him into rehab. Steven Spielberg then hired him for Private Ryan, provided Sizemore be drug-tested regularly, and threatening to reshoot all his scenes if he failed a single test.

Five years later, on the verge of television success as the lead in Robbery Homicide Division, he was kicked off the set of a movie, Piggy Banks, accused of molesting an 11-year-old female actor, and convicted of domestic violence against his then girlfriend, “Hollywood madam” Heidi Fleiss. The double scandal contributed to the TV show’s cancellation.

The two sides of Sizemore’s talent could be traced back to childhood. Born in Detroit, he was the son of Thomas Sr, a lawyer and philosophy professor, and Judith (nee Schannault), who worked in the city ombudsman’s office. A self-described “wayward, angry teen”, he was drawn to acting after watching Montgomery Clift, James Dean and Marlon Brando playing such roles, and by De Niro in Taxi Driver.

He was also influenced by his father’s two brothers. His sober father won a scholarship to Harvard; his uncles were exuberant denizens of a world of drugs and crime. Sizemore tried for years to produce a script about them, An Honest Thief, written by his lawyer brother Aaron, which nearly got made in 2014, starring Sizemore and Danny Trejo. It fell through; a much different version, Good Thief, eventually appeared, without Sizemore, in 2021.

He studied theatre at Wayne State University, Detroit, taking a master’s at Temple, in Philadelphia. He began in off-Broadway theatre in New York; his friends included James Gandolfini, John McGinley and Edie Falco, with whom he had a relationship.

His first film role was in Lock Up (1989), and among his other three roles that year was a part in Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. He did Blue Steel (1990) and Point Break (1991) for Kathryn Bigelow, the Wesley Snipes vehicle Passenger 57 (1992), and the Quentin Tarantino-scripted True Romance (1993), directed by Tony Scott, where he turned down the part originally offered him because he did not want to beat up Patricia Arquette on screen, and suggested Gandolfini, in his first Hollywood movie, for the role.

During the filming of Natural Born Killers (1994) he and Juliette Lewis began an affair; for four months they stayed in her mansion, doing drugs and having sex. “Temptation is impossible for me to resist,” he said. “Come on, this is Hollywood … it’s in the job description.”

From there he played Bat Masterson opposite Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp (1994) and was excellent in Bigelow’s overlooked Strange Days (1995). He had earned a lead role, which came in Peter Hyams’s The Relic (1997), but another small though telling part in Enemy of The State (1998), along with Private Ryan, seemed to lock him into supporting roles.

In his memoir By Some Miracle I Made it Out of There (2013), Sizemore detailed a long affair with the actor Elizabeth Hurley. In 1996 he married Maeve Quinlan, who had also been in Natural Born Killers; they divorced three years later amid accusations of drug use and physical abuse.

He had leads in three TV movies before Robbery Homicide Division, based on the original Michael Mann script that eventually became Heat. When he was not charged with molestation Sizemore returned to Piggy Banks (retitled Born Killers, to capitalise on his notoriety). Fifteen years later, the child actor, now 26, sued him for $3m, but a Utah court dismissed the lawsuit; Sizemore dismissed the allegations as “misconstrued”. His 2003 conviction in the Fleiss case resulted in seven months in jail after he failed drug tests during his probation.

At the same time he began a relationship with Janelle McIntire. In 2005 the couple had twin boys, named Jaden and Jagger. Yet at that point he made a video film called Triple X Tom, with Jersey Jaxin and three other porn actors, in which he claimed to have slept with Paris Hilton. When the celebrity denied it, he said he had made it up to impress the other actors . He did receive an XRCO award nomination as “Best New Stud”. When McIntire divorced him in 2006, he began an affair with Maxine Entwistle, the former wife of the Who bassist John.

Arrests for drug possession and spousal battery followed. He appeared on two Celebrity Rehab shows in 2010 and reunited with Fleiss on Dr Phil (2013). He ping-ponged between scandals and small parts in as many as 16 films in a year, yet still held recurring parts in series such as Hawaii Five-O and Shooter. He was dropped from Shooter when, after accidentally running over a stunt man, he was convicted in 2017 of two charges of domestic abuse against a girlfriend. He was allowed to finish his probation sentence despite a 2019 arrest for heroin possession. His last big film was playing Liam Neeson’s FBI rival William Sullivan in Felt (2017).

Sizemore wrote in his memoir: “There are so many guys who had good lives, great lives, and blew it … I think there are some guys who think they don’t deserve to have good lives.”

He is survived by his sons.

🔔 Tom (Thomas Edward) Sizemore, actor, born 29 November 1961; died 3 March 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Tom Sizemore #in memoriam

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sannylity · 11 months

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with all the information we now have about the Artistic Director x Prostitute AU, what do you imagine that the finished product/show would wind up being?? i have no fucking idea what it would be. thinking about it being a romantic tragedy (like romeo and juliet) with a happy ending (unlike romeo and juliet)

also mariana being good with kids is just so fucking sweet!! i was imagining charlie being like "hey i need to go pick someone up, but they'll have to stick around until rehearsal ends, is that fine?" and marianas like "yeah okay." and it was half an excuse to get away from the director and half because he actually needed to pick up juanaflippa from afterschool care. he could only pay for so much time that people could watch her after school.

so she got buckled up and he was like "ok flippa, we need to head back to where papa's working for now, because its vital- that means important- that im there, and uncle wilbur will be busy with the band today, so he cant watch you, okay?" she just nods excitedly and uses sign language to say 'where are we going?' he smiles and starts the car back up. 'the theater.'

meanwhile marianas helping direct some of the smaller scenes- charlie and/or her wont be in all of them, of course- and its been a hot minute, so hes actually starting to worry about if charlie had run off-

"hey guys, i'm back! sorry that took so long, the afterschool care receptionist was a bitch." the others are excited to see charlie back, and get even more curious when they notice the little figure hiding behind his leg. "aw, come on mi huevita, don't be shy!" the girl steps out from behind him and starts writing on a paper, holding it up for everyone to see. 'hi everyone! my name is juanaflippa! sorry i took away papa, he needed to pick me up!' everyone melts, and mariana looks over, confused.

"ey, i know slime is back, but-" then she sees the little girl looking over at him, and trans bilingual recognizes trans bilingual.

idk idk maybe im just being too goofy silly about this au grgrgrgrgr

-💫

Hello again 💫 anon!!

Hmm… To answer your question, I find Mariana’s plays would be dark and tragic and this may just be his first try on romance that’s why he is the most picky and particular in choosing the main protagonist. I like the juxtaposition of him falling in love with Charlie as something more precious and delicate while producing something dark and twisted and sensual and ambitious and ultimately tragic :D. Y’know like how a sweet man like Guillermo Del Toro produces cryptic and dark horrors before? That’s kinda like Mariana lmaoo

I feel like while Mariana is strict and very serious with his work, he completely melts around children (his nephew Bobby), but especially with Juanaflippa.

Their first time meeting is definitely out of Charlie’s control because he has been keeping his work and personal life completely separate because he didn’t trust Mariana (yet). But let’s say his usual babysitter got sick, so he had to dreadfully bring Juanaflippa with him to work and she does something that completely catches everyone off guard. Like, running up to Mariana, hugging his leg and calling him her mama lol

Charlie is mortified and tries to salvage the embarrassing moment but Mariana is absolutely endeared and before Charlie could pry her off his leg, Mariana picks her up and it’s like they get lost in their own little world.

It’s the first time something like that happened and Charlie watches the pair with wide eyes. Soon, almost immediately enamored when Mariana makes Juanaflippa laugh and all he could do is throw caution in the wind and join them.

Needless to say, the cast and crew are shocked that stone cold artistic director is playing house with his co-star and his daughter.

From there, everything runs seamlessly between them once break was over and they return to their scenes.

And don’t worry about being goofy and silly, it’s part of the charm in coming up with your own ideas <3

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angelasscribbles · 2 years

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Bad Parenting Chapter 2: Chaos for Breakfast

Series: Bad Parenting

Fandom: The Royal Romance/The Royal Heir

Pairings for series: (Riley x Liam x Max) + Riley x Drake

Featuring: Leo, Oliva, M!OC Hudson Rys and F!OC Lilith Nevrakis

Rating: PG

Warnings for this chapter: mild language

Word Count: 2,867

A/N: This chapter indulges my HC of Max as the domestic one of the group!

My other stuff: Master List.

Original series this spun off from: Bad Romance. More specifically Bad Romance Disney Adventure.

After the events in Disney Adventure, Leo finds himself in possession of his thirteen-year-old son Hudson for the summer. Unfortunately for him, Hudson isn’t that impressed with Leo’s newfound desire to be a father.

Being back in Cordonia stirs up old feelings for Leo and ignites new ones for Hudson. Leos strives to reignite an old flame, but Olivia is busy with her own parenting struggles as her aunt’s imprisonment made her the legal guardian to Lucretia’s daughter Lilith, who has plenty of Nevrakis attitude of her own.

Lilith Nevrakis is borrowed, and retrofitted as Olivia’s cousin rather than sibling, with loving permission from @harleybeaumont. She is also much younger here.

Leo woke to the smell of coffee and bacon and the sounds of dishes clattering, children laughing and people talking. He climbed out of bed, hurried through teeth brushing and the relieving of his bladder then wandered down the hallway and into the great room where the open floor plan meant that the living room, dining room and kitchen basically faded into each other.

Max was standing in the kitchen, pulling homemade muffins out of the oven. “Good morning, Leo! Want a muffin? I made blueberry, cranberry, chocolate chip and banana nut. You can have one of each if you want!”

The muffin tin in Max’s oven mitted hand clattered to one of the stone countertops as he lowered it onto a cooling rack.

The kitchen had exploded with activity. It was alive with noise and activity.

Liam walked calmly out of the master bedroom and into the chaos completely unphased. He was immaculate, as always, perfectly pressed suit, every hair in place, briefcase firmly in hand.

Max thrust a coffee mug into his hands, “Just the way you like it, babe. Your plate is ready, it’s on the table, next to Ellie.”

Liam gave Max a smile and quick peck on the lips as thanks before setting his briefcase down and taking his seat at the table with a smile. “Good morning, everyone!” He said brightly.

“Good morning, my love.” Riley was seated on the other side of Ellie, between her and Xander. She leaned around their daughter to kiss Liam good morning then gave both Ellie and Xander a flurry of kisses as she got up from the table, scooping the last of her food into her mouth as she walked to the sink to deposit her plate in it. She then hurried to both highchairs to kiss her little one’s goodbye before grabbing her glass off the table and walking back toward the sink.

She nodded at Leo from across the room, “Good morning!”

“Riley, I made you a lunch, don’t forget to take it!” Max thrust a paper bag in front of her face. “You can’t keep skipping meals!”

“I don’t skip meals!” She protested as she tipped her glass of orange juice up and drained it. She took the bag and sat it down on the counter as she rummaged around in her attaché case, “Do you have a copy of my itinerary for the day?”

Max produced a laminated, bullet pointed list with face to face meetings highlighted in blue, zoom meetings in green and time sensitive tasks in yellow.

“Thank you love bug!” Riley rewarded him with a kiss as she pulled the itinerary out of his hands.

“I wanted waffles!” Xander started to wail from his seat at the table.

“Right here!” Max slid a plateful of waffles in front of him, complete with a smattering of blueberries and a dollop of whipped cream on top.

“Waffles are gross! I want-“

A plateful of chocolate chip pancakes cut Ellie off mid-sentence. Her face lit up, “Thank you Poppa!”

“Drink your milk, Ellie!” Max said, then turned back to the adults as Drake stumbled into the room looking rushed because he’d woken up late, “Drake, you want breakfast?”

“No thanks.”

“I have bacon-“

“No time, Max, I have to go!” Drake said as he filled his travel mug with coffee.

Max immediately threw together a bacon, lettuce and cheddar sandwich with mayo as he asked, “Tomorrow’s your mom’s birthday, have you called her lately?”

“Max, stop trying to mother me!” Drake scolded, but he took the proffered sandwich as he kissed Riley goodbye. “Love you, babe.”

“Love you, cuddle bear.” She pulled away to shove papers into her attaché case.

Drake grabbed a muffin and balanced it on top of his sandwich.

“Don’t forget about your mom’s birthday!” Max called as Drake headed out the door.

“I’ll call her!” He promised as he stepped out into the palace hallway.

“Leo, grab a plate, there’s plenty of food!” Max said as he spooned yogurt into Jace’s opened mouth.

“I’m not sure there’s room.” Leo protested.

“Here, take my seat!” Liam said as he rose, “I have to get going.”

Liam made the rounds, kissing children and Max and Riley before retrieving his briefcase.

“Max, can you call down to housekeeping today and tell them to use just a tad less starch in my casual business shirts? I felt like a fucking statue they were so stiff this last time! Oh, and could you order me some more socks? I swear, every pair I pulled out of the drawer today had holes in them!” Liam said as he leaned over to kiss him goodbye.

“Yes, and here, take some coffee with you!” Max shoved a thermos at him.

Riley was right behind Liam as he opened the door when Max caught up with them, “Riley! You forgot your lunch!”

“Sorry, and thank you!” She told him.

“I’m going to call you at one o’clock to make sure you remembered to eat!” Max said.

“Okay, okay! Love you, bye!”

Hudson wandered into the kitchen rubbing his eyes, “What’s for breakfast?”

“What do you like kid?” Max asked as he cut up more French toast for Jax.

Jace was banging his sippy cup on his highchair tray as he babbled loudly. The corgis ran around the bottom of the hair chair, yipping and begging for more sausage to be dropped.

Xander was singing at the top of his lungs about four little speckled frogs, Jax was making car noises as he pushed apple slices around his highchair tray and Ellie was yelling at Xander to shut up.

“Uh…” Hudson’s eyes widened as he took in all the food. There were waffles, pancakes and French toast, bacon, sausage and ham, fried and scrambled eggs, toast and muffins, cereal boxes stood open next to the sink, milk, coffee, and carafes of both apple and orange juice littered the counter.

“If there’s nothing you like, I can make you something.” Max offered as he gave Jace more scrambled eggs, which the toddler immediately tossed to the floor and squealed in delight as the dogs went crazy racing around to get to them.

“No, that’s cool uncle Max, there’s plenty here, I can get it myself.” Hudson replied as he started loading food onto a plate.

Max started clearing away the dishes. He rinsed them in the sink then loaded them into the dishwasher.

“Ellie, if you’re done, wash your hands and put your plate in the sink. Your tutor will be here shortly.” Max said.

Ellie grumbled as she put her plate in the sink. She washed her hands.

“You too, Xan.”

Xander followed Ellie to the sink and placed his plate in it. Max supervised his hand washing and drying then he sat about cleaning up the little boys. He wiped hands and faces, removed highchair trays and placed them on the counter to be cleaned before removing bibs and pulling each boy out his respective highchair. Max then wiped down the highchair seats.

“Max, have you eaten anything?” Leo asked.

“Oh, I eat plenty while I’m cooking and getting it ready.”

“You know the palace has a kitchen, and a dining room, you could all eat in there, or have whatever you want sent up…”

“I know.” Max replied, “But it’s not the same. These muffins are made with love, Leo! Plus, most of that was sent up from the kitchen. I just plate it up and add the finishing touches, like Xander’s whipped cream and Ellie’s chocolate chip smiley face.”

“I just watched you make Drake a fucking breakfast sandwich!”

Max shrugged, “I just assembled it.”

“You had the bacon sent up just for Drake.” Leo sounded vaguely accusatory.

Max’s eyes flicked to him as he responded, “Yeah. So?”

“So what? You….like each other now?”

Max looked up at Leo in surprise, “We’ve always liked each other! He’s my best friend roomie!”

“I….” Leo’s eyes met Hudson’s and they both suppressed a smile. Hudson might be new to everyone, but a day had been long enough for him to recognize just how unlike Drake that statement sounded.

It did sound just like Max though. Leo widened his eyes at Hudson as he hid his smile behind a coffee cup. He was gratified by the conspiratorial grin he got in return. Maybe the kid was warming up to him after all.

Max whipped out his phone and tapped furiously away, “There! Socks are ordered, housekeeping has been advised about the starch issue and Martha has been told to remind Riley to eat lunch!”

“Who’s Martha?”

“Riley’s office manager.”

“Damn, Max! You’re on top of everything!”

“Thanks, Leo! My organizational skills are second to none. Why do you think Riley hired me as her personal assistant and top advisor in the first place?”

“Uh…” Leo’s eyes flitted over to Hudson then back to Max as he tried to water down his response, “To give you a valid reason to always be around without the press having a field day?”

Max gave him a wounded look, “Wow, really? I mean, yes, that was part of it, but I have always had superior organizational skills and Riley needs that, she’s total chaos most days.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Leo chuckled fondly, “But I never pegged you as the organized type.”

“Really?” Max huffed, “Did you think that those epic, days long Beaumont bashes just threw themselves?”

“Uh…”

“DJ’s just knew to show up? Caterers? All that fucking alcohol? People to assemble the champagne towers? Staff to clean up after the horses? The invitations put themselves in the mail? Customized placards on the doors?”

Leo was stunned, “I just assumed Bert did all that!”

“Ha!” Max barked out, “My brother? Mr. Stick in the mud himself? You thought Bertrand made sure the swords were sharpened for the champagne sabering? You thought Bertrand knows where the strobe lights are stored? You thought Bertrand-“

“Ok, ok!” Leo laughed, throwing his hands up in the air, “I get it!

“Personal assistant is still my job. I just work from home now so I can be here for the kids.”

Leo raised an eyebrow, “Don’t you guys have nannies for that?”

Max scoffed, “Nannies can’t replace a loving parent, Leo. We prefer to be hands on.”

“Yeah,” Hudson interrupted with his mouth full of bacon and waffles, “That sounds like something good parents do!”

“I…” Leo’s eyes cut sidewise to Hudson. There went what little progress he’d made. “I’m just saying, Max seems to be doing all the heavy lifting in that department!”

“Nah.” Max replied as he threw a piece of chocolate chip muffin in the air then caught it in his mouth, “Liam and Riley have a whole country to run, and Drake has the queen’s guard. My job provides the most flexibility. I can run Riley’s staff and juggle her schedule in my sleep at this point. Besides, I like being home with the kids!”

“Of course, you do!” Leo chortled, “You’re a big child yourself!”

“Oh, so real men don’t fuck with their kids, is that what you’re saying?” Hudson had dropped his fork onto his plate to glare across the table at Leo.

“What? No! I didn’t mean….I just meant….” Leo’s head swung around to take in Max, the kids running amuck, the food still strewn across the counters, “You know what? I can admit when I’m wrong. Max had to have been up before everyone else to get all this food ready and make sure everyone else’s day got off to a good start. It’s not a frivolous thing. It’s work. I’m sorry, Max.”

“It’s ok, Leo. You haven’t been around in a while. Things change. People change, they grow and mature and move into different stages of life.” Max said as he put the cereal away in the pantry and the milk and juice back into the fridge.

“I see that.” Leo admitted.

“Uncle, Max?”

“Yeah, Hudson?” Max answered.

“Can you show me around the palace today? I want to see everything!”

Max’s eyes went to Leo, “Uh…sure, but your dad would be even better at that. He grew up here, you know.”

Hudson’s shoulders slumped, “Fine. I’ll go get dressed.”

The two men watched him leave. Leo turned to Max and asked, “Maybe you could help me out with this parenting thing? You seem to have it down.”

“We’ll all help you, Leo. We’re family.”

“You really consider me family, Max?”

“Of course, I do! You’re Liam’s brother! Listen, I know you make fun of all of…this.” Max gestured around vaguely at everything. “But Liam is my husband in every way that matters. We’ve been together for over a decade now. We’re not just playing around and even though the official, legal marriage is between Riley and Liam, we all love each other, deeply! I’m not just a plaything to them, Leo. They both love me as much as I love them, and we are a family!”

“How the fuck does she do it?” Leo asked.

“Do what?” He didn’t have to ask who she was; Leo was talking about Riley.

“Bringing everyone together like that. Never in my life have I been able to maintain one real relationship! You and Liam juggle two each and Riley….” He trailed off, unsure exactly how many relationships Riley had in addition to Liam and Max. Drake, of course. But over the years he’d had his suspicions about Rashad.

“Well, she’s just fucking amazing, that’s how!” Max responded. He knew he and Liam would never have become a thing without her intervention. He was as grateful for that as he was for the woman herself. His life was perfect. Close to eleven years in and he was still just as stupidly in love with both of them as he had ever been. Not that it had been smooth sailing in the beginning. Anything but, actually.

“Speaking of relationships that didn’t work out…” Leo said.

Max blinked, “Were we?”

“What’s Liv up to these days?” Leo asked carefully.

Max laughed, “You’re not subtle dude. Liv is fine. You know Lucretia went to prison in Hidar?”

“What?”

“Something about being in a group that tried to overthrow the government. I don’t know. But anyway, turns out Lucretia had a teenage daughter named Lilith. Liv is her guardian now.”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” Leo exclaimed, “Miss I’m never having children because they’re evil little crotch goblins is raising a child?”

“Yep. For about a year now.” Max confirmed.

“I should call her!”

��Are you telling me you haven’t spoken to her in a year?”

“Well….see…last time I saw her, there was a…ah….disagreement and she…well, things were said, accusations were made, furniture was broken….I thought it was best to let her cool down for a while.”

“A while? It’s been a year! Jesus Leo! No wonder you can’t maintain a relationship!”

“Liv and I….we go all the way back, to like the age of six, ok? And things between us are…complicated.”

Max snorted, “I’ll say! Remember the time you crashed that party on the Prime Minster of Japan’s yacht because you thought Liv was there with his cousin and-“

“I don’t want to talk about that Max! It almost caused an international incident!”

“Yeah, I remember. Constantine was sooooo pissed!” Max chortled.

“It wasn’t funny! She lied to me about where she was that night, she wasn’t even on the damn yacht!”

“Yeah, well, you chose to date a crazy woman.”

Leo lifted a surprised eyebrow at that, “And you didn’t?”

“Ok, fair enough. No wonder those two are BFF’s.”

Xander and Jax ran through the room shrieking with laughter as Hudson chased them. Max laughed out loud, “Look at them bonding!”

Leo sighed heavily, “Now if I could only get him to bond with me.”

“Have you tried apologizing to the kid?”

“What?” Leo blinked at him.

“For not being around? He’s mad, Leo and he has a right to be.”

“I didn’t know how to be a dad, Max. My own dad was a piece of shit. I thought the kid would be better off without me.”

“You should tell him that.”

“Why? It doesn’t excuse a goddamn thing.”

“No. But it helps explain it a little. Hudson’s a good kid. Talk to him.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

There was a knock on the door. “Okay, that’s the tutor for Ellie and Xander. I usually give Jax and Jace a bath while the big kids are occupied. Do you want to have lunch later? I was thinking we could meet in the private family dining room and have lunch with Regina, so she can meet Hudson.”

“Sure, Max. That actually sounds good.”

“Oh, one more thing.” Max told him as he let the tutor in, “We’re having a dinner party tomorrow night and Liv will be there.”

Leo felt both dread and excitement shoot through him. If Leo Rys, the playboy prince, had ever truly loved a woman in his life, there was no doubt that woman had been Oliva Nevrakis. He just seemed incapable of making it stick, no matter how many times he’d tried.

But he was nothing if not persistent.

#bad parenting #angelasscribbles #trr #the royal romance #the royal romance fanfic #choices #choices stories you play #choices fic writers creations #cfwc fics of the week #liam rys #drake walker #maxwell beaumont #leo rys #olivia nevrakis #olivia #trr poly

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thephantomcasebook · 1 year

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You know, about the Matt, Emma, Olivia thing … I’ve heard so many versions, one of which is that they were protesting Sapochnik/Hess’s script, not the new one, and they’re part of the reason for the rewrites and Grrm was on their side. This doesn’t completely make sense as it seems Emma and Olivia liked Sapochnik’s ideas… but then again Hess was the one who made Larys a creep and Daemon a domestic abuser, so maybe they were protesting those elements, which I’m sure she would have tried to make worse? Because I honestly can’t see Matt sticking his neck out over simple disagreements about the characters, even the DV stuff, he is on record saying that at the end of the day, he does what’s in the script. He gives opinions/suggestions and improvs some things as any actor does, but he seems pretty willing to do whatever. Like I just don’t think he cares that much about HOTD, beyond his job as an actor. I can’t see him raising a stink about the script unless it was truly egregious and Emma and/or Olivia were legitimately uncomfortable with something (and I don’t mean uncomfortable as in Olivia wants Alicent to be a lesbian and is mad she’s not, I mean there’s some really serious sexual or domestic violence). Idk, that’s just the vibe I get from him based on interviews, but maybe he’s more invested than I think. I do agree that Olivia is probably too invested in her headcanons and is arguing with the writers about it, but I think that might be a separate issue from the alleged meeting the three of them had with the execs. I guess I just err on the side of believing that HBO would absolutely be willing to put an actress in an unnecessarily degrading scene for shock value (and that Hess would insist on these scenes as part of her “men are evil” pseudo-feminist agenda) considering GOT’s history.

Look, I'll always be up front with you, nonny.

I'm completely open to being 1000% wrong on everything.

If Cooke was out there defending the sanctity of Alicent and Criston's relationship, cause, Hess wanted to ruin them, or ruin Criston's character. I'll gladly take my Katana, basket hat, and a bindle of food, and leave the village with my braid cut from my dishonor.

But from everything I've ever seen of Olivia Cooke through the years, I just don't believe she capable of something that selfless for the integrity of a show that she has made crystal clear that she does not care about. She's an activist first and an actress way down the list. Cooke would do anything to press her message, and I don't think that she'd go out of her way to protect a male role or character to the tune of fucking her entire career for the creative integrity of something she sees only as a stepping-stone.

From my prospective, as someone who deeply distrusts activists of any kind - for good reasons - I'd genuinely believe that Cooke was trying to defend Sapochnik and Hess's original creative vision of this being a tyrannical story of how patriarchy destroyed a Lesbian Romance. And that them going over the show runner's heads triggered the studio to bring in a ringer to completely dismantle that vision and bring the breakaway producers and cast to heel.

However, I do keep open and will entertain the slight - however small - idea that Hess had tried to ruin Criston's character and lean into that all the men on team green - all men in general - are evil. Just because, it seems that the studio acted by bringing in a third party to story edit after the alleged incident. And there is a possibility that they got Hess benched for the former head writer of "The Crown" who has experience writing character driven assembles about royalty.

But, like I said, I could be completely wrong. And I'll own it if I am ...

But I just don't think Cooke capable of falling on her sword. There is something incredibly angry and spiteful about her and the way she expresses her opinions and agendas, you can feel it. And I just don't think she's capable of anything but pushing her agenda and personal bullshit, not caring about anything or anyone.

As for Matt Smith ... look, I can't be objective about him. I've been a fan of Lily James for years and years, and he did something to that girl, something bad, and she's been running - hurting herself and others - to get away from it. And anyone who knows anything about her, knows that Matt Smith has everything to do with it. She ran all the way to Los Angeles, to the other side of the world, to get away from him. I don't know, so I don't comment ...

But I don't trust any story where Matt Smith stands up for women.

#House of the Dragon #Olivia Cooke #emma d'arcy #Matt Smith #Alicole

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