Nico saying that Lewis gives his daughters boxes of presents every Christmas just got caught in my mind.
Imagine you were a mixed race boy born in Hertfordshire, different from everyone else around you. Bullied in school, being raised by your father to compete in a sport where money is very much of essence and you and your family do not have a lot of it. And then you meet this other boy who comes from the kind of life you dream to live one day. You're friends and fierce competitors. You find solace in each other. You visit Monaco for the first time with your friend, dreaming up the life you will have when you make it, when you beat out of the mould that the world thought it could capture you in.
And then you two grow through the ranks and you're at the pinnacle of your sport and you have what it takes to win and the world recognises that you can win. And you win. You win with your friend and fiercest competitor by your side fighting with you for those wins, and this fighting ruins something something that was valuable to both of you when you were still innocent and unsullied by life.
But despite everything that went into the doing and undoing of this relationship, you still realise that this person you once called a friend has a life and family beyond your bitter dynamic. He has children, and children need love and affection and good memories. And you're a better man now so you understand that. So you make sure the kids get gifts on Christmas. And you make sure of it every year. Afterall, if you met someone you loved deeply when you were both kids, wouldn't you feel a pang of nostalgia when they had kids. Wouldn't you try to extend the warmth that you couldn't find for your friend to his children. Afterall, whatever happens during childhood basically remains with you forever.
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Another alternative Effloresce pov. Azriel, as the slow moving shitshow train wreck his life is is quickly becoming a fast moving shit show train wreck.
I cannot tell you how much I love this one!
So, I would say across all my fics Azriel is a character who is the most consistent? Especially since almost all of them were written before acosf TERRIBLY let us in his actually creepy little headspace, and I've additionally chosen to keep my made up shadowman as he is.
Effloresce Az is basically Starlight Az but SADDER. He's Daylight Az without a kiddo and husband, Shoreless Sea Az without the absolutely beneficial retirement, and man is he TIRED.
You're Azriel, and your job sucks. Your inborn skillset leaves you zero other options, and you know this. It's better to be the left hand of power than in a cell for life, but you know what? Sometimes you can only do so goddamn much.
You're Azriel and that's kind of all you've got. You're one of a kind, literally. Alone forever in that. But you love Cassian. You play the little games with Mor for harmony. You respect- alien, ancient, different, probably what you'll feel like in a thousand goddamn years if you live that long- Amren.
You see the good in Rhysand, limited as it is to personal things, but you also see the vast potential for failure.
You see him listening to this CHILD OF A GIRL- who seems nice, yeah. You're worried about her, frankly. The Courts of Prythian revived her and will not just let that go- but that doesn't mean you think she has, shall we say, good ideas.
You watch Cassian spend days arguing against this.
You rock up over the wall and realize these two mortal, innocent women have probably been taken captive by Spring. Your orders are a mistake, you have a war to fight that has nothing to do with these people, but you're here, and you might as well do some good.
You move to neutralize the threat.
Lucien Vanserra does not act like a vassal of Spring. No, not even at Autumn prince. You can drown fire in the dark, but you can't swallow the sun or an ocean of flame without end.
That doesn't matter either, because this determined little slip of blond sunshine just fucking stabbed you. And for the first time in maybe decades, you just want to laugh. You've fucked up, clearly, but you're okay. (You can live through so much worse than letting a human woman stab you to feel safe.)
You hear Cassian coming, and you know.
It doesn't matter what Feyre is saying. Has said. You're Azriel and you can't not know or not hear- she's wrong or she lied. You have a High Lord sweating blood to protect a stunningly, dangerously charming woman and you have her sister, who feels less like delight and more like a dream.
You're a shadowsinger, whose providence is secrets and these two woman are shrouded.
You're fucked, essentially.
You know they're not really human.
You know they're hiding, and Feyre is going to break that right open if Rhysand has his way, no matter how many times you point out that the Queens want nothing to do with Prythian's fae.
You're Azriel, and you've always been smart enough to stay quiet when you have no orders forcing you to do otherwise. You're polite. You're frankly, horrified. You have no idea what to do with the Archeron sisters acting like you're nothing to be afraid of.
You know, before Cassian knows, that every wind that has ever carried him had lead him right here.
(You remember what that felt like. The fear, the euphoria. You were young and stupid enough to consider it simple rightness, your extra senses on your side, pulling you toward the correct choice in fealty. You didn't know what it was until too late. You didn't know and you never even got to know or got to mourn. You didn't have the right to mourn a girl dead too soon, who would have never been anything but your queen had she grown old enough to wear a crown.)
(Dead before the start, just like you.)
You decide, immediately, you cannot let what happened to you happen to Cassian. Nesta Archeron might be a compelling power, might be a fighter with ash in her hair and a cunning mind, but Shahar was a High Lady born. Not even that could save her.
You understand the instant way you like Elain is magic, whether she knows it or not. (She does not). Real affection follows quickly, you are, despite all magic to the contrary, as Illyrian as Cassian. You cannot not know. You like Nesta too- if only for her ferocity. Her bleeding, present fury.
They treat you like a person.
Fearlessly.
Easily.
You watch as their sister breaks their hearts, cracks already laid. You watch Rhysand act more and more territorial, and of course you know why too. You watch Lucien Vanserra safeguard the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of humans and you understand this, here, is a Court too.
A better one.
You quietly, a secret, kill their father.
You bind yourself in blood to a favor, and use it to unshackle the Archeron bloodline and their vassals from the Queens.
You watch Nesta Archeron kneel in the snow, watch Elain Archeron pull a knife on a High Lord of Prythian over human lives, and think, with dread and barren exhaustion, you're making the right choice.
The hard choice.
(How many noncombatants died in Sangravah? In every city Amarantha occupied? How many servants in the Hewn City every year? How many Illyrian children in the starving north? How many deaths were Azriel's fault, because Rhysand didn't care?)
(The Archerons would rather die with their people than live. Were educating their maids. Sending their kitchen boys to university. Taking in the orphans of other estates, having never forgotten what it was to be forgotten, hungry and alone.)
You're Azriel, and you can't not know how badly this is going to hurt.
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nimona thoughts! still my top movie of the year so far!!
been thinking about how to frame my thoughts on this gem, and I ultimately arrived at a bit of a pretentious jumping-off point. but honestly, my favorite stories are always the ones that end up demoting the whats, the hows, and sometimes even the whos in service of the whys. it's the hardest question and context to tackle in any story, and it's worth interrogating the most in order to find any true meaning, any connection at all to what's told.
nimona shows exactly why walling yourself away from the "others" isn't good enough. it shows why you have to do the work and see them.
not just that it is dogmatically "the right thing to do". not just depicting what certain systemic injustices are, how they are deployed, and who they are targeted at. but the why. that simplest, purest shape of questioning an injustice dating back to your gentlest time as a child, when you were vulnerable, naive, and truly curious in the best possible faith. the question you would always ask was why.
you are picking up a sword to threaten the unknown. you've been told the whos and whats. you parse it thus. but you don't know the why. you are watching this happen on TV, contextualized, simplified, dramatized. you are connecting the dots. understanding the why.
nimona painstakingly drills down on that why. arduously, achingly digging past the institutions of fear fed by cycles of indoctrination and right down to the core of it. packaged in a simple-to-parse fantasy world built with deft, elegant metaphors and archetypes that immediately fall into place and make sense to a person of any age.
it is animation as a medium and fantasy as a genre both working in concert. a fun and colorful romp that ends on a gentle embrace of reassurance that tells children - both literal and the ones buried deep inside adults - that their first question to the world was always the correct one. because it was the kindest.
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