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werezmastarbucks · 4 years

Text

guest

the reader opens up to her boyfriend about the demonic intruder haunting her at nights

tyler joseph x reader x kai parker

genre: horror

warnings: stalking

word count: 2950

music: ode to sleep by twenty one pilots, o come o come by tyler joseph

At night you put the drawer to the door and put your lava lamp on top. You fell asleep every time looking at the changing neon soft lights, to get woken up at three exactly, to the sound of his fists drumming on the door. Every night.

He’d come from the corridor, a tall shadow, as you once saw him, not in a hurry at all. He knew you wouldn’t run anywhere, not even through the window, because you were always afraid of getting too far out of it.

He’d walk down the corridor and to the door, and try to open it. Once he succeeded, and was inside your room, and you woke up, to see the silhouette standing above you. In the dark of night, he looked completely black. His eyes were vaguely glowing, and you were completely cemented in your place. People are generally divided into two groups when scared: those who scream, and those who freeze. There’s a legend that there’s also a thin layer in between, a group of people who fight, but you’ve never met one. The closest to that was your boyfriend.

You never told Tyler about the ghost hunting your house. You were scared to seem nuts; you had no proof and hasn’t caught it once, largely because the ghost was trying to catch you.

At school, you weren’t really the people’s favorite, so you just got through moderately peacefully by sticking with your best friend and your boyfriend.

What would you say anyway? Hey, Tyler. There’s this dude, he started manifesting himself at my house at nights. He’s invisible to everybody except me, and he always appears in the middle of the corridor, and walks to my room, and I don’t know what he wants to do with me, but he scares the shit out of me.

You were afraid he’d think you got some issues, and find someone better.

There wasn’t much you could do except put the drawer close to the door, and make it heavy, piling all your tings on top, and turn on the lava lamp to see when he comes.

Sometimes you thought it was all your imagination. You’ve heard that urban legend about a girl who thought her house was haunted. The things disappeared, and she heard voces constantly bothering her day and night. She saw shadow people lurking outside, trying to break inside the house, and one of them actually smothered her dog; when she realized she’s the only one seeing all of them, she took it upon herself to protect her family. That girl had a little sister, too, and didn’t want any harm to come upon her. Maybe she was a witch, or just had this thing that some people have. The kind of sensitivity for supernatural things. She was the only one who could defend her loved ones.

She got armed with a kitchen knife and attacked them the next time they tried to get inside. Strike, before they make a move. The girl allegedly spent a tough long afternoon chasing ghosts around her front yard, and killed all of them. To then discover they were, in fact, her family, and she’s been hallucinating the whole time.

That’s the kind of stories that were floating around in the town. No one would really believe you if you told what’s happening. Although your case was slightly different from that poor girl’s. The black shadow guy coming for you almost every night seemed to only have interest in you. It was like he was uncertain yet; that one time he actually got inside the room, he vanished, as you lay there, paralyzed by fear. You never managed to get rid of the sight of him, disproportionally tall, completely silent, watching you in bed. He seemed like he was about to bow, but you opening your eyes made him change his mind.

Other nights he was more persistent and you bet he regretted not having acted while he had a chance.

Usually he wouldn’t get past the door barricaded by the drawer.

You’d look at the lava lamp sending her orange, red, green and infernal blue light across the room, like it was a safe beacon of protective fire; as if it could actually stop him. While he hammered his fists on the door, pulling and twisting the handle, you held the blanket with your numb fingers. You were never religious so you never prayed. You had a strong feeling he wasn’t afraid of Jesus.

The worst thing was seeing the drawer move and wiggle when he pushed the door with his shoulder. Once, the lava lamp nearly tipped over, and you moaned with fear. Nobody heard anything in the morning, and that one time you screamed, unable to hold it inside anymore, you got in a big row with your parents.

Tyler took your fist and tried to undo it, to interlace his fingers with yours.

It was that hour after school when you’re not ready to go home yet, and the street seems gray even in the middle of the afternoon, and everybody looks like zombies.

Maybe I am going crazy after all. Thinking about stuff like that, and listening to depressing music, all those things at school weighing on you, made you feel like you were tied to the house, because the demon boy was there. You were afraid he’d do something to your family, too.

“You don’t seem like yourself these days”, Tyler complained, but his voice sounded pondering, as usual. He was a philosopher, this guy, always analyzing stuff and the words people say, reading into them.

“I don’t sleep well”, you said, putting your head on his shoulder. His soft black hoodie was warm even on the outside. His baggy clothes, his hands, like the lava lamp, seemed such a safe territory. You were scared he’d take it all away if you told him.

“Why?”

You knew Tyler had insomnia, too. He was suffering from regular headaches, turning into prolonged migraine, that started on the top of his head and cralwed down to the very base of his neck. You suspected he had some kind of injury he never spoke about. He did double work; taking care of you and fighting his own pain all the time. You knew it hurts even during the day. You read him when he suddenly put his head into his hands or stopped talking in the middle of the sentence. His silence was soft and dignified. He carried it well. You wished you could help him somehow. Sometimes he’d look so sad, such deep regret in his eyes, that you’d think it was something more serious that he let out.

Now you just needed him.

“I don’t know”, you shrugged.

“Huh. Doesn’t seem true”.

You hid a little guilty smile in the fold of his hoodie sleeve. Your arms vined around his shoulder, and you two watched the playground for some time, silently.

“Is something happening, Y/N?” he asked.

You felt bad.

“I don’t know”, you muttered again, like a dummy. “I’m sorry”.

You kissed his cheek as he tried to read you with his dark eyes. His ears caught your soft whisper.

I love you.

You heard the footsteps and rolled onto your back. Your elbows started hurting almost instantly as you tried to lift yourself up. Sleeping with the lava lamp on, you ruined your dreams completely, and you were sure the sleep wasn’t as healthy as it was supposed to be. You were dozing instead of sleeping, waking up every five minutes, horrible visions floating around.

You knew what came next. He stopped at the door, and for the hundreth time, you couldn’t believe it’s happening. How, in the rational boring world, do you get to have a night intruder vanishing in thin air, getting out of the darkness of your house like a vampire; why you?

The soft knock on the door didn’t, and wouldn’t wake your parents up. You were glad you didn’t have any pets; you didn’t want to imagine what he’d do to a dog barking at him.

Your heart pounding, you sat yourself, back to the wall, feeling the glossy smooth surface of a poster with your bare shoulder. Your own hand snaked up to your neck, holding the whimper inside the throat.

He knocked again, mockingly polite, as always. He never said a word, like he didn’t have a voice, which was way scarier.

Knock knock knock still sent a very clear mesage: let me in.

You just wished you’d get through your night routine as usual, and he’d leave again. You felt exhausted, old, thinking, you were slowly getting used to being haunted.

Suddenly, a hammering knock shuddered the door, and you jumped. The back of your neck started sweating. The lava lamp changed from orange to purple, the color you hated because it was too dark for the night. The people on your posters, smiling indifferently at you, they had no idea. They wouldn’t help.

Bang bang bang!

His hand was heavy. He was hitting the door like he was a drumming machine, at the fast pace as if trying to drive you crazy. The door stood, loyal and hard, but when he started colliding with it with his shoulder, it shook like carton.

Suddenly, the thing happened that hasn’t occurred before, and you put the hands to your mouth, feeling the blood pump in your ears.

The drawer actually moved.

He is getting stronger.

The lock clicked, and the door opened half an inch. Lava lamp tipped and fell on its side, banging on the wood, and you closed your eyes for a second.

You held your breath. The demon boy stopped. All of a sudden, there was whistling silence, and you heard the night wind outside. The narrow black line between the door and the wall was sucking the light out, the blackest you’ve ever seen, like space vaccum. Magnetizing your gaze.

You couldn’t sleep like that. The crack was big enough for him to watch you.

You crawled out of bed and listened again: nothing. Perhaps he exhausted himself opening the door. It seemed like he only had so much energy for one night.

Your knees were shaking violently as you stepped to the drawer and put the lamp back up. The jelly soft bubbles were drifting inside, like soulless clouds, casting neon colors on your face.

You reached for the door to push it back closed, having no desire to look into the crack... as your fingers touched the wood, a violent push crashed on it, moving the door and the drawer together. You jumped away, unable to hold a yell.

He was getting inside.

You crashed into the opposite wall. The drawer now stood almost sideways, and door was open wide enough for him to slither inside.

“Go away”, you begged.

“But I love you”, a voice said.

Your knees gave in, and you slid down on the floor, grouping so hard you could come off as a big cat. Your arms wrapped around your legs. He sounded hollow, alien, as if he was standing far away, wrapped in a plastic bag. The door moved a little, and he showed his head inside the room. Seeing him, a human looking guy, was so catastrophically sobering that your mind went numb.

He didn’t have horns or black eyes, or sharp teeth of a monster. His face wasn’t distorted or disfigured; he looked like a usual boy. Only, there was this predatory hungry look about him. Sadistic smirk curled his lips when he looked at you sitting on the floor.

“Go away”, you asked again. He cocked his head, mockery in his eyes.

“That’s a pretty lamp”.

He moved so sharply you jumped again, throwing yourself into another corner of the room, like a cat that doesn’t think at all. Your joints were burning, working to escape, but there was nowhere to run.

He held onto the door, and with the other hand, he snatched the lava lamp from the drawer. You didn’t look, pressing your face into the wall, but there was a characterisical click, and the room went dark.

He stole your lava lamp and stole your beacon light.

The walls of his house were stiff and reliable. You liked to be in Tyler’s room because of all the things connected to him. You appreciated his constant musing; some people even said he was a bit slow sometimes. Tyler was a bit sad. But the saddest people are the most precious when you make them smile, and you made Tyler smile a lot.

He was funny when he swung his baseball bat, pretending to be a bad boy, about to smash some heads. He had a quirky sense of humor that always entertained you in a way that stuck with you. He was special, and he was good, and you were completely fine with others not getting him.

You were looking at the baseball bat put against the wall next to the book case.

Tyler came into the room with the towel on his head, rubbing hard his short soft hair, and then threw in right onto the bed. You stood up, sighing, and tried to find a place to hang it.

“You’re messy”, you noted. Tyler puffed, disinterested.

“You okay? You never get up so early on a Saturday”.

“Uh-huh”.

“What did you wanna talk about?”

There was hope in his voice; obviousy. He wasn’t fooled by all the badly masked secrets you kept. Like an owl, he watched you closely, but never intruded, probably, trained well by his folks: he knew how much it sucks when someone is trying to get under your skin. Even his mom thought he was weird, while he was simply sanguine; so she bugged him constantly.

He patted the bed next to him, inviting you. You liked to sit close so that your thighs touched, you connected to him.

“I need to tell you about what’s going on in my house”.

Tyler was quiet.

“There’s someone... uh”.

Anything you’d say, it would come out fucking stupid. Like in a movie.

“There’s this person who comes to my house at nights and tries to get into my room. I’m the only one who can see him. At first I thought I was sick, but last night, Tyler, he took something from my room, and it isn’t there. I think he exists”.

His face hardened. Tyler changed; the expression of his usually kind demeanor was something you’ve never seen before. It was hostile, and for a moment, he felt very distant.

“What does he look like?” he asked, his voice low.

You were taken aback by his question. No ‘are you sure’, no ‘you mean like a ghost?’, no ‘is this a joke?’.

His arm went up your shoulder, and he hugged you, bringing you close as if to keep this conversation quiet and between you. You were getting a strange sensation.

“Y/N, what does he look like?”

“Like a boy. A usual, teenage boy. You believe me?”

“You should see yourself nowadays. You look tired and horrified”.

Tyler never called you ‘honey’, or ‘baby’. His ‘you’s said much more than that. Sometimes they communicated way more tenderness than any nickname.

“You spoke quietly, and then he said he’d stay with you for the night. He got very upset you didn’t tell earlier. His frustration at it seemed very deep; like something made him profoundly uncomfortable. You’ve also never seen peaceful, quiet Tyler so menacing.

He took the baseball bat with him.

“Shithead!”

A sound of broken glass pulled you out of sleep, vivid and simultaneously, ghostly. You couldn’t tell if you dreamt it or not.

The room was dark; without the lamp there was no way of telling who else was in here. You searched for Tyler next to you, and he wasn’t in bed. The sheets were stil warm, and you had a sensation of his skin under your hand.

You sat in your bed, dizzy. As your eyes got used to the dark, you finally realized the drawer is moved away from the door.

There was something happening in the upstairs bathroom.

You jumped off the bed. You couldn’t lose him. Tyler was yours.

You went to the door and opened it wide, stepping into the darkness. Few feet away, the narrow line of light was indicating someone was in the bathroom. Okay, maybe Tyler just knocked something over because he’s sleepy.

“Come here!”

His voice was hissing like a snake. He was whispering, but it sounded like the rain noise. Something bumped against the door, like there was a swift fight.

“Tyler!” you called.

Silence. Then, a sudden burst of laughter of that hollow, distant voice again. Your feet carried you on, and you pulled the handle, opening the door. Laughter rang in your ears, fading away in the depth of the house and your own brain. For a second, you were blinded and frightened by the light.

Your lava lamp sat on the edge of the bathroom sink, and Tyler was holding onto it, panting, his back humped like he’s been trying to outpower someone. But there was no one else.

His neck was covered in black, something that looked like blood, or oil, but was complete, vanta color, and it moved, as if darkness was consuming, coming up to his chin. Tyler’s jaws pressed together, and then he turned and looked at you - with the eyes of a stranger instead of his own. Like there was somebody else inside.

#tyler joseph #kai parker #blurryface #tyler joseph imagine #kai parker imagine #twenty one pilots imagine #tvd #kai parker x reader

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thisbluespirit · 3 years

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James Maxwell TV/Film List

More of a guide than a recs list, because old tv/film depends so much on availability. It’s also hard as there’s nothing surviving that’s really like SotT for him (his voice is always slightly different, too & rarely the grand one from SotT) - I found it hard to find where to start back in the day, so I hope this makes it easier. However, I have starred my favourites (rated for JM content only).

I’ve divided things into categories and @jurijurijurious (or anyone) can make up their own mind as to what to go for. (Also @jurijurijurious I have NO idea what old telly you’ve already seen, so forgive me if I’m telling you things you already know.)

Where to find it: Luckily in the UK, it’s not too bad! Network Distributing are the DVD supplier to keep an eye on (they do great online sales), you can find secondhand things cheap on Amazon Marketplace & eBay, and several Freeview channels show old TV & film, especially Talking Pictures. I’ll note if things are on YT or Daily Motion, but they come and go all the time, so it’s always worth searching.

***

Film serials (ITC mainly)

British TV made on film in the US mode with transatlantic cash, so generally pretty light, episodic (continuity is almost unheard of) etc. Some turn up on ITV3 & 4 on a regular basis (colour eps).

*** Dangerman “A Date With Doris” (ITC 1964) James Maxwell is a British spy friend of Drake’s (Patrick MacGoohan) called Peter who gets framed for murder. Drake goes to Fake Cuba to rescue him by which time JM is dying from an infected wound and faints off every available surface, including the roof. It’s great. On YT. (The boxset is v pricey if you just want 2 eps.)

“Fair Exchange” (ITC 1964) JM is a German spy friend of Drake’s called Pieter who helps him out on a case. Not as gloriously hurt/comfort-y as the other, but it does have some excellent undercover dusting. (Why Patrick MacGoohan has JM clones all called variations on Peter dotted around the globeis a mystery.) On YT.

The Saint “The Inescapable Word” (ITC 1965) This is pretty terrible, but entertaining and James Maxwell plays the world’s most hopeless former-cop-turned-security guard. With bonus collapsing. On YT.

“The Art Collectors” (1967). JM is the villain of the week. It does include a v funny bit, though, where the Saint (Roger Moore) goes for JM’s fake hair (and who can blame him? How often I have felt the same!) This one’s in colour so should pop up on ITV3 or 4.

The Champions “The Silent Enemy” (ITC 1968). Surprisingly good JM content as the villain of the week who drugs sailors and steals their clothes before realising that maybe he should have worked out if he could operate a sub before he stole it.

The Protectors “The Bridge” (ITC 1974, 30 mins.) Not worth seeking out on its own, but ITV4 seems fond of it and James Maxwell gets to do some angsting and wears purple, so it’s worth snagging if you can, but too slight otherwise.

*** Thriller “Good Salary, Prospects, Free Coffin” (ITC 1975; 1hr 10mins, I think). James Maxwell moves in with Julian Glover and runs an overcomplicated murdery spy ring where they bicker a lot in between killing girls by advertisement and burying them in the back garden. What could possibly go wrong?? Anyway, it’s solid gold cheese, has bonus Julian Glover and a lot of natty knitwear. What more does an old telly fan want? (tw: Keith Barron being inexplicably the very meanest Thriller boyfriend.) On YT but tends to get taken down fast.

***

Films

Design for Loving (1962; comedy). Can be rented from the BFI online for £3.50. Isn’t that great or that bad (or that funny either), but does have JM as a dim layabout beatnik, which is atypical.

***The Traitors (1962). This is a low-key little 1hr long spy B-movie, but it’s also thoughtful and ambiguous with a nice 60s soundtrack and location work (it’s a bit New Wave-ish) and the central duo of JM and Patrick Allen are sweet and it all winds up with James Maxwell going in the swimming pool. One of the things where JM is actually American. (Talking Pictures show this occasionally & it is out on DVD as an extra on The Wind of Change.) The quality of the surviving film is not great, though.

***Girl on Approval (1962). A Rachel Roberts kitchen sink drama about a couple fostering a difficult teenager. It’s dated, but it’s also really interesting for a 1950s/60s slice of life (and very female-centric) & probably the only time on this list JM played an ordinary person.

***Otley (1969). Comedy that’s generally dated surprisingly well & is good fun, starring Tom Courtenay +cameos from what seems like the whole of British TV. JM is an incompetent red herring & there are more cardies and glasses as well as a random barometer.

Old Vic/Royal Exchange group productions

(Surviving works made by the group that JM was involved in from drama school to his death, made by Michael Elliott or Casper Wrede. I like them a lot mostly, but they are all slow and weird and earnest & not everybody’s cup of tea.)

Brand (BBC 1959). The BBC recording of the 59 Company’s (the name they were then using) landmark production, starring Patrick MacGoohan. This was a big deal in British theatre & launched the careers of everybody involved. It’s very relentless and weird but interesting & I’m glad they decided it was important enough to save. First fake beard alert of this post. It won’t be the last. On YT & there is a DVD, which is sometimes affordable and sometimes £500, depending on the time of day.

***Private Potter (1962). The original TV play is lost and this film has an extraneous storyline, but otherwise has most of the TV cast & gives a pretty good idea of why as a claustrophobic talky TV piece it made such an impact. Tom Courtenay is Private Potter, a soldier who claims to have had a vision of God during a mission & James Maxwell his CO who needs to decide what to do about this strange excuse for disobeying orders. Tw: fake eyebrows (!) and moustaches. Only available on YT.

[???]One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1970). Again, no DVD release (no idea why), but it is on YT. I haven’t seen this yet, but it’s another Casper Wrede effort starring Tom Courtenay and apparently JM is especially good in it. (I’m just not good at watching long things on YT and keep hoping for a DVD or TV showing.)

Ransom (1974). A more commercial effort starring Sean Connery & Ian McShane; it gets slated as not being a good action movie, but is clearly meant to be more thinky and political with the edge of a thriller. JM’s part isn’t large but Casper Wrede shoots his friend beautifully, & it’s a pretty decent film with nice cinematography, shot in Norway, as was One Day. I liked it.

[I think this post might be the longest in the world, whoops. Sorry!]

Cardboard TV (the best bit, obv)

One-off plays etc./mini-series

Out of the Unknown “The Dead Planet” Adaptation of an Asimov short story; this is very good for JM, but hard to get hold of unless you want the boxset. I think someone has some of the eps on Daily Motion. (His other OotU ep is sadly burninated.)

The Portrait of a Lady (BBC 1968). Adaptation of the novel; JM is Gilbert Osmond, so it is great for JM in quantity and his performance, but depends how you feel about him being skeevy in truly appalling facial hair. Do the bow ties and hand-holding make up for it? but he’s in 5 whole episodes, and Suzanne Neve, faced with Richard Chamberlain, Edward Fox, and Ed Bishop as suitors, chooses instead to marry the worst possible James Maxwell. Relatable. XD

***Dracula (ITV 1968, part of Mystery & Imagination). JM is Dr Seward, fainty snowflake of vampire hunters, who falls over, sobs and can’t cope for most of the 1 hr 20 mins. More facial hair, but not as offensive as last time. Suzanne Neve is back again, although now JM is nice, she’s married Corin Redgrave, who’s more into Denholm Elliott. Anyway, I love this so much because it turned out that I love Dracula as well as shaky old TV with people I like in getting to fight vampires and all be shippy. Good news - TP keep showing M&I, the DVD is out, and there are two versions of it up on YT.

The Prison (Armchair Cinema 1974). This is the one with Lincoln in it, but it’s not that great & JM isn’t in it that much, so depends how curious you are for the modern AU! (But my Euston films allergy is worse than my ITC allergy, and I watched this when very unwell, so I may have been unfair.)

Crown Court “Fitton vs. Pusey” (1973) - part of the Crown Court series, set in a town full of clones who all keep returning to court. JM is on trial for his behaviour in (the Korean war? I forget?) although he ought to be on trial for his terrible moustache. It’s not that great, but it is nice JM content. He probably did it, but for reasons, and he wibbles & panics whenever his wife leaves the courtroom. Also on YT.

*** Raffles “The Amateur Cracksman” (ITV 1975) - He is Inspector Mckenzie in the Raffles pilot & is a lot of fun. At one point when there was a Raffles fandom someone in it claimed he was too gay for Raffles, which I’m still laughing about, because Raffles. Anyway, watch out if you try to get the DVD because it is NOT included in S1, whatever lies Amazon tells. It is up somewhere online, though, I think.

Bognor “Unbecoming Habits” (1981). Some down marks for possibly the worst 80s theme & incidiental music ever, but fun & has been shown on Talking Pictures lately. JM is an Abbot running a honey-making friary that is actually a hotbed of spies, murder, gay sex and squash playing. This is the point at which he chooses to strip off on screen for the first time, because strong squash-playing abbots do that kind of thing apparently.

Guest of the week in ongoing series/serials

Since even series with a lot of continuity tended to write episodes as self-contained plays (like SotT), these are usually accessible on their own.

Manhunt “Death Wish” (1970). This is one of the most serialised shows here, but this episode is still fairly contained. WWII drama about three Resistance agents on the run across France. JM is... a Nazi agent & former academic trying to break an old friend (one of the series’ three leads, Peter Barkworth) with kindness, possibly?? (Manhunt is very angry and psychological & dark and obv. comes with major WWII warnings (& more if you want to try the whole thing), but it’s also v good.) Up on YT, I think.

Doomwatch “The Iron Doctor” (BBC S2 1971). “Doomwatch” is the nickname of a gov’t dept led by Dr Spencer Quist that investigates new scientific projects for abuse/corruption/things that might cause fish to make men infertile etc. etc. JM is a surgeon who comes to their attention because he’s a bit too in love with his computer for the comfort of one of his more junior colleagues. (I think it’s perfectly comprehensible & a nice guest turn, but it is hard to get hold of outside of the series DVD. Which, being a cult TV person, I loved a lot anyway, but YMMV!)

***Hadleigh “The Caper” (S3 1973). Hadleigh is a very middle of the road show, but watchable enough (lead is Gerald Harper, who’s always entertaining) and this is pretty self-contained as it centres around an old con-man friend (JM) of Hadleigh’s manservant causing trouble by pretending to be Gerald Harper, for reasons. JM seems to be having a ball.

Justice 2 episodes, S3 1974. He guests twice as an opposing barrister & gets to be part of some nice showdown court scenes. Again, a middle of the road drama, but stars Margaret Lockwood, who was still just as awesome in the 1970s as she was in the 1930s & 40s. On YT.

Father Brown “The Curse of the Golden Cross” (1974). JM is an American archaeologist getting death threats; stars Kenneth More as Father Brown. Just a note, though, that 1970s TV adaptations tended to be really really faithful and this is one of the stories where Chesterton comes out with an anti-semitic moment... (JM was unconscious for that bit and, frankly, I envied him.) But otherwise lots of angsting in yet another fake moustache about someone trying to kill him.

The Hanged Man “The Bridge Maker” (1975). Confession time, I have v little idea what this one was about apart from Ray Smith being an unlikely Eastern European dictator, as this whole series went over my head and was not really my thing. (Ask @mariocki they’re cleverer than me and liked it & can probably explain the plot!) I don’t know if it’s available anywhere off the DVD but on a JM scale it was v good/different as he was a coldly villainous head of security & it wouldn’t be too bad to watch alone, but there was an overarching plot going on somewhere.

Doctor Who “Underworld” (1978). This is famously one of the worst serials in the whole of classic Who, but largely because of behind-the-scenes circumstances, not the guest cast. There is some nice stuff, though, esp in Ep1 (JM is a near-immortal alien who’d like to lay down and die but still the Quest is the Quest as they say... a lot) & it’s bound to pop up on YT or Daily Motion. The DVD has extras that include v v brief bits of JM speaking in his actual real accent (which he otherwise does in NONE of these) & making jokes in character. Honestly, though, this is the only DW where the behind-the-scenes doc is genuinely the most exciting bit as they desperately invented whole new technologies & methods of working to bring us this serial, and then everybody wished they hadn’t.

*** Enemy at the Door “Treason” (LWT 1978). This is a weird episode but I love it lots - from a (v v good) series about the occupation of the Channel Islands. (So obv warnings for WWII & Nazis.) JM is a visiting German Generalmajor, but he’s come for a very unusual reason - to ask for help from his brother-in-law, a blackballed British army officer (Joss Ackland). It’s all weird and low key and JM is doomed and nevertheless probably my favourite thing of his that isn’t SotT.

* The Racing Game 2 eps (1979). Adaptation of Dick Francis’s first Sid Halley novel Odds Against (ep1) + 5 original stories for the series. This is an interesting one - JM plays Sid’s father-in-law & they have a lovely relationship that’s central to the book BUT Dick Francis loved this adaptation and Mike Gwilym who played Sid and was inspired to write a sequel Whip Hand, which he tied in with TV canon - and adopted at least three of the cast, including JM. Which means that all the Sid & Charles fanfic is also JM fic by default and it’s quite impressive. (There’s not much but it’s GOOD.) On YT.

Bergerac “Treasure Hunt” (1981). Not a major role, but pretty nice & it’s one a Christmas ep of the detective show (also set on the Channel Islands) that involved Liza Goddard’s cat burglar, which was always the best bit of Bergerac.

His guest spots in Rumpole of the Bailey (1991) “Rumpole a la Carte” and Dr Finlay (1994) are both really just cameos, but both series come round on Freeview; the Rumpole one is funny and the Dr Finlay one his last screen appearance before his death the following year.

Not worth getting just for JM: Subway in the Sky; Bill Brand and Oppenheimer.

These films only have cameos but some quite fun ones and they come around on terrestrial TV: The Damned (1962), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) & (more briefly) Far From the Madding Crowd (1967). (I think his cameo in Connecting Doors must be at least recognisable as someone spotted him in it just based off my gifs, but it’s not come my way yet.) I’ve never been able to get hold of any of his radio performances, not even the 1990s one.

ETA: I forgot The Power Game! This is the one surviving series where he occurs as a semi-regular (at least until halfway through S1 when he went off to the BBC to be in the now-burninated Hunchback of Notre Dame). This isn’t standalone, but it’s a good series and it is on YT. See how you go with crackly old TV before you brave it but it’s the snarkiest thing ever made about people making concrete and stabbing each other in the back. JM is a civil servant who tries to run the National Export Board and is plagued by Patrick Wymark and Clifford Evans as warring businessmen.

***

[... Well, now I just feel scary. 0_o In my defence, I have been stuck home bored & ill for years, and often unable to watch modern TV while trying to cheer myself up with James Maxwell, so I didn’t watch all of this at once. It just... happened eventually after SotT. /waves hand

But if anyone feels the need to unfriend my quietly at this point, I understand. /o\]

#james maxwell #masterlist #rec list #well sort of #1950s #1960s #1970s #1980s #there are some things i haven't seen #and some things i know to be extant but unreleased #everything else is burninated or status unknown

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nomadicism · 4 years

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Now that She Ra is over, what are your thoughts on it? What about that Catradora kiss?

Hi Anon! Thank you for the Ask!

ヽ(*⌒∇⌒*)ﾉ Where to start?

I have so many thoughts on the show, and I’ve had so many thoughts since season 1. I’ve not written much of anything about She-Ra because I keep coming back to this problem of ‘where to start,’ or how to structure my thoughts beyond a +1000 item list. I can’t even pick one or two thoughts to dive into, because they all end up connecting to everything else —> honestly, that’s the mark of a tight narrative, even the big pieces that can fully stand on their own are still leading through to another piece. I fail at every attempt to write something brief.

Section I: Short answer first.

I have a very short and subjective list of media where I not only love (for different reasons) nearly every character (main, secondary, background), but where I also feel that their individual places or moments or arcs concluded in a way that felt right from start to finish. It’s a short list of media where connections and conflict between characters never felt forced, out-of-place, out-of-context, or done for shock value. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power makes that very short and subjective list.

It’s not often that a story hits all the right notes with me, and it’s much more often that a story starts off strong like that, and then turns me off ½-⅔ of the way through. I’ve quit video games during the final boss fight because the story lost me in the lead-up and I wasn’t going to waste 10-20 minutes of my time for something that turned out to be ‘meh’. It ain’t got to be deep, or anything either.

I really loved the voice acting. Everyone is great. A post for another time.

I love the aesthetics, which I wasn’t sure of at first teasers, but won me over in less than 3 minutes of the first episode (season 1) because I love bright pastels, the character designs are fun (can I still gush over variety of body types? YES), so many opportunities to explore stylish takes on the characters, and those Moebius-inspired scenery/background designs are a special interest delight. Season 5 delivered a visual ‘end game’ for the aesthetics in many ways, Section III further down will get into that a bit.

Section II: “What about that Catradora kiss?”

I gotta preface this with, shipping is not my go-to for how I enjoy creative works. It’s not a hobby for me. Sure there’s a few I dig more than others, but I’m otherwise agnostic about ships, unless there is a really bad story-fit (and that’s usually a subjective thing), or involves tropes that are a deal-breaker for me (and those typically relate a lot to the story fit).

With that said, I’m really happy to see Catradora be pulled off so brilliantly, and I think the kiss is a bold and beautiful big deal in a way that might not be obvious when considered in a vacuum. I see it as passionate and heart-felt, but also, it’s achieving(?) a relatable outcome (for me at least) that’s hard to describe. It’s an outcome yielded by a story in which two women—a hero and a villain—are divided and fight bitterly and then reconcile through love, while fighting a purity cult whose founder-prophet-god-king forces subservience through a conversion designed to strip someone of their identity (e.g. names they’ve chosen for themselves), memories-and-motivations, and love for others.

Despite these conversions, love still remains, it can’t just be baptized or therapy-ed away. Controlling puritans and authoritarians wielding religion or peace-panaceas as a weapon have been the villains in the lives of countless women and LGBTQIA people for a very long time. So yeah, I’ve got some feels about that. The last time I felt anything similarly relatable, or as strongly, was the Utena and Anthy relationship in Revolutionary Girl Utena (and really, their kiss during the surreal sequence at the end of the film adaptation).

Section III: Thoughts on Cult Aesthetics and Clones (the rough cut)

(1) In the future scenes at the end, Adora’s white dress with gold tiara and accents have this kind of goddess-like or Pallas Athena feel to it, which is a great mirror of the design choices for the god-like Horde Prime, his Purity Space Cult, mechanics/ship, and flagship interior scenery. Not saying that was the intention, but that’s how it came across to me.

Of course, those colors would be used because She-Ra already wears white and gold with a bit of red accent, which complement how the princesses are bright and colorful (pastels and jewel tones). The bold and bright colors helps signify that Etheria is full of life. Etheria is verdant and magical, and that sets up a contrast to the Fright Zone and the darker colors found in Horde characters (Hordak, Shadow Weaver, Scorpia, Catra, Entrapta, etc).

So the first kind of contrast was with the Fright Zone standing out as a poisoned/toxic against the bright, lively colors of Etheria and the princesses. Season 5 introduces another take on that contrast as Horde Prime is the opposite, or antithesis of Etheria’s colorful life. He’s like anti-life with his shades of light-and-dark grays on white, and only glow-green as an accent. In some cultures and religious traditions, white is associated with purity, and in others it is associated with death.

When Horde Prime ‘purifies’ Hordak for the sins of individuality and emotion (emotion for others, for his own sake), Hordak is drained of the colors he chose for himself during exile. In addition to being a contrast to Horde Prime (and informed by the 80s cartoon design), Hordak’s dark blue (or blue-black) and red color palette reflects the traditional use of red as a color for evil (especially vampirism) from back when diabolism was a stand-in for ‘the Devil’ in many forms of visual media (comics, live-action, animation, etc). In place of diabolic red, Horde Prime has toxic glow-green.

I absolutely love the use of the glow-green accents. Color trends for villains and significations of evil come and go, and I’m glad to see the color green be used again, and used so well. The last time I saw that shade of glow-green used so well was in Sleeping Beauty (re: Maleficent’s magic and the orb on her staff) and as the Loc-Nar in Heavy Metal. In both films, there are connotations of evil as a poisonous and corrupting influence. Green, in the context of evil, almost always signifies poison (and sometimes envy). I also like that the glow-green color is used in ways that aren’t immediately saying ‘this is evil’, such as the green baptismal waters and flames from the purification scene, or the green amniotic protein fluid. The language of piety and trappings of the sacred can cloak a sinister purpose.

I don’t know if any of that was intentional, but Horde Prime feels like the perfect synergy of purity and death (which has additional connotations, but that’s a very personal interpretation).

(2) Horde Prime immediately gave me subtle cult vibes in his first cameo (Season 3), and the follow-through on that was perfect and exactly what I was hoping to see. The background music throughout the scenes aboard the flagship fits well (love the soundtrack), and has the quality of Ecstatic Experience without pulling directly from any specific religion. Horde Prime’s dialogue is a delightful bit of narcissism veiled with the language of piety.

A purity cult comprised of clone-brother-worshippers of the cult’s founder-prophet-god-king reinforces that narcissism and has all the fun-dark feels of shiny-techno-future-dystopias. It is also an interesting use of clones, especially in a story format that usually never has the time to really dive into the complexities of cloning. This is the sort of thing that you’d be more likely to see in a one-off episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, rather than the basis for a greater scope villain, or multi-season nemesis. (and yes, Star Trek: TNG had an interesting clone episode)

Clones in science-fiction tend to fall into just a few tropes, and I generally dislike seeing clones show up in a story because the execution nearly always feels sloppy (in small ways or big ways). I did not get that feeling from She-Ra, where, the clones occupy the “cog in the machine” trope, but it is not their existence as clones that make them that way, it is the Will of Horde Prime that does. They are simultaneously expendable and sacred in their unity. It’s a nice flip on “stronger by working together” that Adora and the others have to learn (and struggle) to do.

It seems like, despite their religious programming, the clones have a little bit of their own personalities until Horde Prime ‘inhabits’ them to exert his Will. I’m trying not to read too much into it, b/c what comes across as ‘inhabits’ to me (especially with the religious/cult context), was probably meant more literal like described in the dialogue as a hive-mind control kind of thing. The first time it happens—to post-wipe/death Hordak—felt to me like a possession scene from The Exorcist, but without the kind of horror visuals that would scare both adults and children. The quick-and-subtle amount of body contortion and sound is still gross and creepy (because it should be), but it also reminds me of Ecstatic Experience in the form of speaking in tongues, or snake handling, or being a medium for a spirit. Again, I’m not saying any of that is intentional, but that’s how I see it.

(3) Finally, there is Entrapta, Hordak, and Wrong Hordak. Clones rarely get to be ‘humanized’ through friendship or romance arcs. I can think of a dozen or more robots that get to be humanized in that way, but can’t recall any clones that have (excluding doomed clones whose friendship/romance only existed for the sake of selling the tragedy of their death). Hordak gets death, renewal, and romance in a way that worked really well, and the totality of it is unique. I was a bit surprised that they could work in another clone—and I love Wrong Hordak—who pulls triple-duty as (1) comedy; (2) relevant to moving various pieces of the story along; and (3) more humanizing of the clones, which, again rarely happens as most stories take the easy low road when it comes to clones.

For Entrapta’s part, she’s never put in the position of giving up who she is (‘weird’ by many standards) for a romance. Her passion for technology is both an amusing double entendre at times, and integral to who she is. A romance for Entrapta does not replace her passion for technology, she can have both. Dating myself but, I came up in a time where most media (for children or adults) would rob a woman of her agency or passions during the resolution of a romance arc. Maybe times have changed, but it’s still nice to see none of that nonsense happening here.

#catradora #entrapdak #spop #spop meta #spop asks #ask me anything #spop s5 spoilers

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goattales · 5 years

Text

Caught in the Act

Plot: The reader catches Jasper and Alice making out and he starts avoiding them cause he's way to embarrassed to deal with that. Note: the reader doesn't know they're vampires

You, in general, didn't really fit into any of those neat little groups the school divided itself into. You weren't sporty enough to be a jock, you didn't wear enough black to be a got, and you weren't popular enough to be, well, one of the popular kids. You were just Y/N L/N, some high school Senior that kept his head down. The universe had no plan for you, you were merely wandering this earth as a bystander.

But that didn't mean you didn't want to be part of a clique, because it gave people a deeper sense of belonging, a reason to act the way you want to, dress the way you like, do things you enjoy, all with likeminded individuals! But it was too much stress, you preferred to just bounce between interests- sports, art, history, books -without having to be tied to one forever.

And with all that running around your head you started to shove your books and pencil case into your bag, barely even letting the bell ring before you stood up to go to lunch. Nothing fancy in your bag today, just some leftovers from last night's dinner and a bag of candy you had been slowly working through all day.

Despite not being in a clique, you didn't sit alone; you sat with Angela, Mike, Eric, and Jessica. Bella use to sit with you guys too, before she started to sit with the Cullens, now her relationship to the group was more a see-eachother-in-the-corridor-and-smile sort of deal.

That wasn't so big of a concern for you, though, in fact the first time you saw her sit at the table you knew she wouldn't be sat with you all for long, she had one of those popular looks about her, so when she was hand selected to join the five person moping party that was the Cullen table you weren't too surprised.

In some other timeline maybe she would have gone on to joint the nerds in the back table near the stage, or maybe she would have taken to the goth table that was in the corner near the fire exit. And maybe there was even alternate universe where she stayed at this table, but that would be something you may never find out.

Not, at least, with Mike Newton pulling you back to real life with little care for your ears.

"Y/N! Are you even listening?!" Mike dragged you out of your train of thought by waving a hand in front of your face and screeching at you. That was surprisingly subtly by his standards, though.

"Mike, leave him alone, he just got out of maths. He's recovering, aren't you, Y/N?" Jessica came to your defence with an elbow in Mike's ribs and a soft sort of grin for you, and you thanked her with a small smile before you spoke.

"It's okay, Jess, but thanks. I was just thinking about existence and how absolutely infinite it is" you shrugged.

"That much, huh? Deep, L/N, deep." Mike seemed stunned, or maybe he just regretted prompting you to talk, but either way he didn't try to drag you into the conversation again, and you took the opportunity to fall back to your thoughts gratefully.

When you all parted ways for the last five or so minutes of lunch everyone waved, some hugged, and Mike and Jess walked off attached at the hip. They were together again, though who knows how long it will last at this point. You and Angela were talking the other day, and agreed that they were probably so on-and-off because they were lonely and the other was close enough to fix that for a bit.

You shook your head and huffed quietly, rounding one corner after another and then climbing a set of stairs only to realise you left your coat in your last classroom, and with a great deal of frustration you turned on your heels and took a brisk walk back. You were hoping, no praying, that the room would still be unlocked, because the teacher would have left by now and the room won't be used until tomorrow.

By some streak of luck it was, but when you pushed the door open and made a grab for your coat- laid out on the teachers desk, predictably -the shuffling of other people's clothes made you look up so fast you hurt your neck.

Stood in the back of the room were Jasper Hale and Alice Cullen, both very disheveled and looking rather like deers caught in headlights. Even from as far away as you were, you could see that Jasper's shirt was almost completely open and the straps of Alice's bra and vest top were a mess around her forearms, more of her chest on show than usual.

As they rushed to correct it and called out for you to wait, though being vague as opposed to a name-you heard a very light "h-hey, you with the coat, wait!" as you made a break for it.

You decided in that moment that you would have to move schools, because the most they did was hold hands when other people were around and there was no way you could face them after seeing that, so you spent the next three days avoiding them as much as possible.

The next day you barely dodged Alice in the hallway, narrowly avoided Jasper in the bathroom, and didn't go to lunch at all for fear of them cornering you as you entered the hall. The day after that it was sunny enough for their mum and dad to yank them out of school. The third was more perilous, you had History and sat a seat in front of Jasper, but you managed to talk the guy in front of you into switching, and you made a show of hanging behind to talk to the teacher until everyone else had left.

But the fourth day it was all over. You thought that maybe they had just dropped it, because when you sat to eat and glanced over at the table with as discrete of a gaze as you could manage, Alice caught your eyes and just looked away.

You were actually just leaving as you were bumped out of the stream of teenagers and then grabbed by what you would maybe describe as the ice cold grip of death himself, but looking down you saw it was just Alice. Little Alice with the big eyes and pretty lips, lips that right now were pressed into a thin, terrifying smile.

She dragged you into a classroom, where Jasper was sat on a table, hands clasped together in his lap and shoulders stiff.

You were actually terrified, because in the few seconds between being grabbed and then getting pushed into this room you had convinced yourself that you were going to get murdered.

"You know, my family is gonna worry when I-I'm not home by four, so killing me w-would be a real bad idea" your mouth ran despite your better judgement telling you to keep it shut, though your fear died in your chest when Jasper snorted.

"What?" Alice let you go and raised an eyebrow, looking at you like you'd grown a second head. "Y/N, we're not going to kill you, where did you even get that idea from?"

"W-well, I walked in on you two the other day, a-and you've been ch-chasing me down ever since" tripping over your words, you were scratching the back of your head as though it would wake you up, because that would be really good right now.

"Only 'cause you've been running away." Jasper spoke this time, and you looked over to see him staring at you much in the same way Alice was.

"We just wanted to apologise, because the way you found us was kind of..."

"Unbecoming" where Alice trailed off, Jasper picked up, and you found yourself rushing to speak.

"Oh! Oh- no it's fine, I've walked into worse. This is a high school, freshmen are practically feeling eachother up in the halls every day. I just, well you two don't even hug around other people, s-so I assumed you would be super annoyed that I walked in"

Jasper shrugged and Alice shook her head, laughing softly.

"No! We were just really ashamed that you had to see that, especially Jazz." as Alice spoke, Jasper nodded along, and spoke only when she had finished.

"I hope this has not altered the way you see us, Y/N, though perhaps we can build a friendship from this experience."

Lost for words, you nodded, and something inside of you starting to warm up at the idea. Perhaps the universe, in all its vast and unpredictable glory, had a plan for you after all?

#twilight #jasper hale #alice cullen #male reader #twilight x reader #twilight x male reader #jasper whitlock hale #male reader insert #my writing #this got way longer than i thought it would

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myupostsheadcanons · 3 years

Text

Books “Read” in 2020

Previous entries: 2019, 2018, 2017

I don’t rank these based on actual literary quality, but by how much i enjoyed reading/listening to them. Hopefully with Audible’s new “Premium Included” feature it would cut down on so many Average/Below Average books next year, it’ll give me more of a choice on what kind of books/podcasts i want to listen to rather than given a handful to pick from a month.

The “Top 10″

Forging Hephaestus / Bones of the Past: Villains' Code Series - Drew Hayes has became one of my fav authors over the past couple years, from his Vampire Accountant series, 5-min Sherlock, and his Spells, Swords, and Stealth books. FH is one of the few times he wrote Adult Fiction. This is the second time Drew created a world of super heroes (the YA Superpowereds), thus previous experience in dealing with the nuisances and meta of super meta dynamics. I love the main character, Tori, and especially love many of the side characters (like Ivan) and the comedy is the right tone of dark and not-in-your-face (not quite as well -written as something like The Venture Bros or The Tick, but being adult fiction you can get away with having characters named Johnny Three-Dicks and Captain Bullshit)

Dreadnought / Sovereign - the second super hero series I’ve placed on my top list this year, this one is Young Adult. This one is far more serious and deals heavily in issues like trans and women’s rights, mental abuse, and social acceptance. The main character is full of angst, but that should be a given for a 15 yo with lots of mental baggage and new social pressures. The main character is the main draw, most of the side characters are a bit more one-dimensional.

The Trouble with Peace: Age of Madness, Book 2. It isn’t a “First Law” book if you don’t want to strangle half of the main characters. Many are stepping outside of the shadow of the previous generation and finding themselves falling flat on their faces. If they aren’t at each other’s throats, they would soon have to deal with rebellion in the streets and the constant looming presence of Bayaz, who waits to sweep the board clear and rearrange the pieces the way he sees fit.

Michael J. Sullivan’s: The Riyria and Legend of the First Empire Books.

Riyria Revelations: Theft of Swords / Rise of Empire / Heir of Novron

Riyria Chronicles: The Crown Tower / The Rose and Thorn / The Death of Dulgath

Age of Death / Age of Empyre, Pile of Bones

After finishing the Legend of the First Empire books that came out earlier this year, I went ahead and read the prior series that takes place in the same world. I would suggest reading the entire series by Publish order, but they can be read Chronologically. I read the Legends books first, and it helped me see where Sullivan was heading and when he started to plan out the Legends books in more detail. (The early cameo of the Main characters from Legends in a mural in Heir of Novron, and knowing who is behind the events in Dulgath)

The Dresden Files: Peace Talks / Battle Grounds - They really should be read as one book, because that was how they were written. It is a Feast of Crows / Dances with Dragons situation, where the book got too long and got split up. The fans are pretty divided by the book(s) ending and how some of the main characters are handled, but these are Jim Butcher’s characters not theirs and he can drop bridges on whom ever he wants.

What Lies Beyond: Cycle of Galand, Book 6 - This is a “mythology” book (like Sullivan’s Age of Death was) where it introduces most of the Pantheon of their religion and corrects much of the mythology that had been lost over the decades. They seek a weapon to vanquish the Litch and save their world and the afterlife from oblivion, but not all of their Gods are happy about it.

Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash - Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation!) has to be one of my favorite internet personalities for the past 10+ years, and I eat up every book he puts out and because he wrote the books, and is an actor himself, he could deliver the lines as they are intended to be. The sequel to Will Save the Galaxy for Food does not disappoint and even ups the stakes from the previous book.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon - This has to be one of the most charming books I’ve read. It is magic and wonder at it’s finest, no need for long explanations on how the world works. If you like Ghibli movies, you’ll be interested in this book. It has its dark moments but isn’t outside of what you’ll find in something like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicca.

The Goblin Emperor - the youngest son of the Elf King finds himself emperor after the death of his father and brothers in an assassination. The only problem is, that he is only half-elf... his late mother was a Goblin, and he had been in exile as an embarrassment to the family for most of his life. He knows nothing of how the courts work and what’s left of his own family work against him just for being who he is.

Lost Gods: Brom - I liked this book more than I did American Gods (which I read a few years ago). It is darker and bleaker by the bucket loads. One of the few books with a downer ending that I actually liked. I would compare this book to books like All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men-- but it is a Fantasy!

Above Average.

Siege Tactics (Spells, Swords, & Stealth. Book 4) - What happens to adventurers after they retire? A fun concept that is explored with our party of NPCs running across a town full of epic-level characters that no longer have a player.

The Arthurian Saga - The Crystal Cave / The Hollow Hills / The Last Enchantment / The Wicked Day - A more realistic version of the Arthurian tales, taking the POV of Merlin, bastard son of a princess, as he earns notoriety as a scholar and wizard. The Wicked Day takes the POV of Mordred, making him far more sympathetic than other iterations of his character.

Arc of a Scythe - Scythe / Thunderhead / The Toll - Science and Technology eliminates death and in order to prevent over population and complacency an order of grim reapers are chosen to randomly deal out quotas of permanent deaths. An example of what happens when every need and want is satisfied by a higher force and the apathy that causes rot in human society and the superiority complex of those in charge of life and death.

The Diviners / Lair of Dreams / Before the Devil Breaks You / The King of Crows - Horror during the Roaring 20′s. Tackles issues as Racism, Poverty, Government Secrecy, Christian-Evangelical Cults, Nationalism Cult Mentality, Communism, Labor Unions, Eugenics, Post-WW1 trauma... It could almost pass as an adult fiction book. I wouldn’t recommend giving it to someone under High school age.

Ancillary Justice / Ancillary Sword / Ancillary Mercy - Artificial Intelligence takes over human bodies as a form of capital punishment, controlling ships and space stations. The dominate human empire outgrew the need to label any gender, using “she” to refer to everyone rather than the vaguer “them/they” pronouns, and only outlying colonies stick to the binary ideals. Think of “The Left Hand of Darkness” but on a more broader scale and as the default majority/ruling empire. Toss in a solid military action novel on top and it isn’t nearly as boring as Left Hand.

Children of Time / Children of Ruin - War destroys the human population of Earth and those that remain are the ones that headed out to the stars on tera-forming missions. A virus created to advance life forms to prepare a world for human habitation runs amuck with out its overseers, creating intelligent arachnids, crustaceans, and squid.

The Licanius Trilogy - The Shadow of What Was Lost / An Echo of Things to Come / The Light of all that Falls - It is very heavy on info overload, there is a lot to keep track of, so much so there is a summary of book one and two at the start of the third. I like the twist at the end of the first book and that the villain is actually trying to help save the world, and you spend most of the second stuck between who thinks they are doing the right thing and who is actually doing the right thing - a lot to talk about doing the lesser of two evils.

Mythos - Steven Fry - A humorous retelling of Greek mythology. I read Mythology - by Edith Hamilton prior to this book, which is a more scholarly take on the myths, and helps if you are unfamiliar with classical mythology prior to reading Fry’s take on it.

Iron, Fire and Ice: The Real History That Inspired Game of Thrones - a nice history book about Iron Age royalty. It is actually refreshing to read after going through so much faux fiction that is in Philippa Gregory’s books.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? - Children ask questions to a Mortician about death and what happens to bodies after people die. I listened to her autobiography last year/year before and it is worth picking up this one along with it.

Average, but still good.

Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet Universe: Triumphant (Genesis Fleet, Book 3) / Tarnished Knight: Lost Stars, book 1 - The realistic space battles just drag me back in each and every time.

The Case of the Damaged Detective: 5-Minute Sherlock - Drew Hayes can’t write a boring book. It isn’t quite on point as his other series, but still fun to read. Hayes is really good at making YA books with Adult Protagonists. It is a road-trip book, the main character is a washed-out operative that is getting his second chance playing bodyguard and future assistant to the 5-minute Sherlock.

Locked In / Head On - Do you remember “Surrogates”? that Bruce Willis movie where people walk around in robotic avatars, well... it’s almost the same thing. A virus kills millions, save for a select few that experience “lock in” syndrome and are able to connect to robots via their brains and the internet. The main character is gender neutral and you get a choice to listen to the book with a male or female reader.

Murder by Other Means: The Dispatcher Book 2 - more John Scalzi! The first book was in my top list a few years ago, and i enjoyed the sequel just as much. Between Scalzi’s The Dispatcher and Locked In series, i like the Dispatcher more.

The Shattered Sea Trilogy: Half a King / Half the World / Half a War - Joe Abercrombie’s attempt to make Young Adult books. It keeps all the grim dark, but lacks all the swearing and humor that made The First Law books more enjoyable. Many of Joe’s favorite character tropes are still present and is one of the better “Fall to Darkness” stories I’ve read. It also has different POV characters each book and is one of those “faux fantasy” settings.

Mage Errant: Books 1, 2 & A Traitor in Skyhold: Book 3 - If you are wanting to get away from Harry Potter, pick up this book series. It takes place in magic school, but it is its own world and setting and not just a hidden world within our own. The main group of kids are misfits among the school, unable to master their powers, that get taken up by the badass librarian to be trained in more unconventional ways.

Dawn of Wonder: The Wakening Book 1 - the main character has ptsd from growing up in an abusive household, and i thought it was handled rather well. He would be rather competent and cleaver most of the time until he gets triggered into an episode, he fights really hard to overcome this short-falling of his. Standard classic affair else wise, family leaves home because the local authority figure doesn’t want them around anymore, goes to big city, kid wants to do good and avenge the deaths he was accused of, joins the badass school of hard knocks... big powerful evil thing trying to consume the world.

The Rage of Dragons - It shares a lot of tropes and story points with Red Rising... just in a fantasy setting, not in space. If you are wanting fantasy with POC main characters and a non-European-centric culture, that doesn’t pull any punches, give it a shot.

Earthsea - Tehanu and Tales from Earthsea - I had read the first three books several years back, and i did re-read them in order to refresh myself prior to reading the final two.

The Secret Garden - I absolutely loved the movie from the 90′s as a kid, and finally got around to listening to the book.

Six of Crows - A heist book in fantasy world with the magic users being heavily “Jewish / Slavic” coded by how they are treated and persecuted. I might have thought more favorably about the book if i hadn’t read other books with “street rat slum” main characters. (Seriously, after spending six books with Royce in Riyria someone like Kas is just second bananas)

Unconventional Heroes / Two Necromancers - Comedic Fantasy, the humor’s not on par with say MogWorld, and has more jokes than Fred The Vampire Accountant. It is still a parody of villains and heroes in fantasy worlds. I would find it safe for a 12/13yo to read, cursing and all, though they might not be aware of many of the tropes that are being deconstructed. The reader of the book did better in this one then he did with Six of Crows and Beezer, still the audio needed some editing because it repeats itself a few times.

Once More Upon A Time (Free Audio Book) - I don’t always care to read romance stories. I like the idea behind it however, to trade their love for each other in order to save their partner’s life, then learn to re-love one another again.

Monster Hunter International - If you think Dresden is too liberal, this takes a hard turn to the right.. replace the magic with GUNS, lots and lots of GUNS. An organization that hates the government but hunts monsters for government bounties. The main cast is multi-ethnic and they do make fun of that at one point. There isn’t a lot of thought into the plot, because action is #1, but it is fun enough to ignore the politicking.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Collection - i bitched about there not being an omnibus last year, and then Audible uploaded one. The ending is still one big clusterfuck.

Stephen King’s Insomnia - this book is the bridge between Steven King’s two universes. It is a sequel to IT and brings up the Darktower often. IT dealt mainly with childhood fears, Insomnia deals with Elderly and feminine fears.

D’Arc / Culdesac: War with No Name - I liked D’Arc more than i did Mort-e, and Culdesac is more on track with Mort-e. The virus that mutated the ants and animals reminded me of the virus from Children of Time/Ruin, even though i read Mort-e first, reading D’Arc after CoT let me notice it.

Michael McDowell’s: The Amulet / The Elementals / Gilded Needles / Blackwater - From the guy that wrote the screenplay of Beetlejuice, and the pioneer of the Southern Gothic Horror. Gilded Needles is a bit out of place, taking place in 1890′s, and is more of a social horror rather than a super natural horror the other books are.

Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 - high fantasy dark fiction. if you really want some CHONKY door stoppers, there’s over 10 of them in this series. Could’ve done less with the manipulative bastard mage that speaks in 3rd person. I had read The Willful Child, an attempted comedy science fiction novel by the same author, and it showed that the author was unfamiliar with that kind of genera and should stick to grim fantasy.

The Knife’s Edge / Citadel of Fire: The Ronin Saga - This is one of those series that I’m always going “oh, that reminds me of [insert another better series]” At times it reminded me of The Licanius Trilogy, Shades of Magic, Arc of Scythe, Riyria, Korra... It is just shy of being as good as them, and is rather firmly in that Sci-Fi Fantasy Ghetto and has a bit of “anime” feel to it with their magic users having ‘power levels’ and the power creep.

In Calabria - My only problem with the book is the massive age-gap between the Main character and his love interest. Outside of that, the whole Unicorns in the modern world concept is done very well.

Pout Neuf (Audible Free Book) - Journalism and romance during WW2. A quick read and the book really shows that research had been done about the setting and time period.

Nut Jobs: Cracking California's Strangest $10 Million Dollar Heist: An Audible Original - Not only does it talk about the heist, it actually touches on the subject of migrant farmers and slave labor, as well as the desertification of the California Valley.

The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel (Free Audio Book) - a neat little informative podcast if you are looking for an introduction to some of the harder science fiction.

Mythology - by Edith Hamilton - Text book about Greek Mythology. Like “used in schools” text book. It is a good read if you don’t want to go through Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and all the other classical writers on your own.

The Space Race: An Audible Original - America didn’t win the Space Race. Russia did just about everything first. The only thing we did first was put people on the moon. It also goes into detail about how the inventor of the Nazi’s V2 rockets became employed with the US Space program. As well as the government’s announcement to let space travel become privatized.

Pale Blue Dot / Cosmos: A Personal Voyage - It’s Carl Sagan. Come on! Everyone should be reading them. Pale Blue Dot was being turned into an Audiobook in the 90′s but with Sagan’s death, only the first few chapters were read by him and his partner reads the rest of it (she does a decent job, and i understand why they wanted her to read it, it should’ve been done similarly to Cosmos, with guest readers doing each chapter)

Thicker Than Water (Free Audio Book) - start up pharmaceutical company scams people out of millions with promises of a miracle machine that was ahead of its time. Story told from the whistleblower himself as he recounts what his job was within the company and how he knew the owner/founder of the company and how coming out about what was going on ruined his relationship with his family and friends.

Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - biography on Douglas Adams and the history behind the creative process behind the Hitchhiker’s Guide series.

The Genius of Birds - It reminded me a lot of “The Soul of an Octopus” in quality. It is rather informative about birds, how they behave, and how we judge intelligence in non-human animals.

It’s “ok.”

Les Miserabes - I can see why people favor movies and theater versions because of how dense the book is, getting the cliff notes version of the book instead of reading several chapters about the Battle of Waterloo.

Viva Durant and the Secret of the Silver Buttons (Audible Free Book) - It’s cute, and I spent the next several weeks humming that freaking song.

Challenger Deep - A book about mental illness by the same person that brought us The Arc of a Scythe series. It isn’t a bad read, but if you are prone to get panic attacks and have mental illness yourself, you might get too into it and make you uneasy. It can help with neurotypical people with understanding how some illnesses work.

Into the Wilds (Warriors, Book 1) - Ah, the cat book. It is prob because there are soooo many books in this series that it over-saturates the kids impressionable minds.

House of Teeth (Audible Free Book) - I read this book prior to Monster Hunter International, and thinking back on this one, i am reminded about the other. Save for this one is PG. So... the kid friendly version.

The Martian Chronicles - Space Horror, on Mars. If you like old science fiction, like Classic Trek, Wells, or Forbidden Planet stuff. There is a lot of zerust.

Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection - The third superhero series I’ve read this past year. It is not as ground breaking nor subversive as Villain’s Code or Dreadnought. The humor is a bit too forced and parts of it falls into “we can be more offensive because it is an adult book” category.

Interview with the Robot - Don’t really care for books or programs that are set up in the “interview” format where it is two people talking to one another. (I have no fucking idea how this book got top Kids book of the year on Audible, it is more of a YA book... it must been because it was Free and lots of people picked it because the rest of the choices that month were complete garbage)

Micromegas - perhaps one of the oldest examples of Speculative Science Fiction. Written by Voltaire, it is about a giant from another solar system that is so big that humans and life on Earth are microscopic. “what value are the lives of ants to a man?”

The Three Musketeers - i had forgotten how much espionage there was in this book. I would say this is a good companion book to Don Quixote, as it takes its fair share of inspiration from and even name-drops the character a couple times.

Charles Dickens: Oliver Twist / David Copperfield / A Tale of Two Cities - DC is the standout IMO among the three, it is Dickens’ Magnum Opus. Les Mis did a far better job with the Revolution than Tale did as well. I felt rather obligated to reading these books because of the subplot in the Age of Madness books being about Poverty during the Industrial Revolution and Workers Revolts against the Ruling Class.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - the version i listened too made most of the Americans sound like GWB... which is funny because one of them is Canadian, and the Comic Relief character about how boorish Americans are.

Stuck (Free Audio Book) - it is a neat idea, getting jarred free of time but everybody else isn’t and doesn’t remember. It gets a little heavy for a kids book near the end, edging into YA territory as the character gets older mentally and the people around him age physically.

Phreaks (Free Audio Book) - i knew a lot about Captain Crunch and other phone hackers of the 60′s. There is a subplot of the big radioactive corporation covering up causing cancer to their workers, and the father (voiced by Christian Slater) being in the closet but still homophobic about it.

Silverswift (Free Audio Book) - If you like fairy tales set in modern times, it is worth a look. It is similar to In Calabira in that way. The mom being the nonbeliever and thinking grandma is off her rocker, but the granddaughter knows it in her bones that grandma is telling the truth.

Sleeping Giants - alien mechs from the distant past, once mistaken as the titans and gods form mythology, now being studied and experimented on by the government. This is another “interview style” story telling.

Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes - there is a lot of names and stories, it is worth prob getting a physical copy of the book to keep things straight and to use as a reference.

How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps - A love letter to The Legend of Zelda’s Ocarina of Time and other RPG games.

Casino Royal: James Bond - the movie was rather faithful, including the part of being tied to a chair. I do wish they kept more of the book’s ending where Bond was ready to retire prior to his secret-spy love interest gets killed.

Aliens: Bug Hunt - a compilation of Alien stores about people landing on various planets and encountering aliens, not always the Xenomorphs we know, but the term “Bug” came synonymous to any dangerous alien lifeforms encountered.

Macbeth: A Novel - retelling the story of Macbeth but in a novel form. If you can’t get past the language of the original play, this would help. It sets it more firmly in historical fiction.

Hannibal: A Novel - I went ahead and re watched the tv show after finishing the book. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times, and i understand why they changed the ending to the movie. The book is the main one that characterizes Hannibal and the show uses a lot of the plot. Hannibal Rising wasn’t really needed because Hannibal (in this book) does think/talk about what happened to his sister and home, and i can see why Harris didn’t want to write that book either. The audiobook is rather poor quality, they talked too fast in places and i don’t really care for their acting...

The Power of Six - I read I am Number 4 several years back and this one popped up on sale so i nabbed it. I like Neil Kaplan, and i think this one is better than the first one and actually gets into the meat of the story.

Cut and Run: A Light-Hearted Dark Comedy - body parts harvesting.... mmmm.

Calypso - non-Fiction, biography of the author. Talks about his family, his life with his partner, and what he does. Much of it is charming and it is read by the author. this was prior to him loosing his marbles about retail workers and becoming a karen.

Our Harlem: Seven Days of Cooking, Music and Soul at the Red Rooster - the history of Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance. I didn’t mind this podcast so much because i was reading The Diviners during the same time.

Malcolm and Me - another biographical book. one of the free books i got during Feb’ Black History Month.

History of Bourbon (Free Audio Book) - Informative about the liqueur industry in America.

Junkyard Cats: Shining Smith Book 1 - post apocalyptic action science fiction novel. the moment that guy showed up i was “that’s your bf.” and it was so... the plot wasn’t hard to figure out, it’s all about the action and setting.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - One of the better Heinlein books. The man can’t write romance and he is rather big on casual polygamy and open marriages. An anarchist-revolution book written by someone that is more on the Libertarian side of the aisle. Mycroft (the computer) comes off as rather antiquated, an AI that runs on a closed server, communicating through the telephone lines and printed paper, makes me wonder what Heinlein would’ve done if he was told about the internet and Deep Fake tech. (the book takes place in like 2075, but written in 1966)

Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World - the production of coffee and it’s prevalence around the world.

The Life and Times of Prince Albert - Exactly what it says on the can. *rimshot*

The Real Sherlock: An Audible Original - a biography of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Design of Everyday Things - using psychology to improve the design of systems, products, and the modern business model. It gives proper terminology for several common design features and how to improve on existing structures.

Bottom of the Barrel.

The Pagan World: Ancient Religions before Christianity. I was hoping there would have been something in there about European Religions, there isn’t, and the book was mostly Greek and Roman life styles and how gods are worshiped. It let me know where the word “auger” came from and why it was used in the Licanius Trilogy.

Life Ever After - disjointed at best. a couple that aren’t good for each other spend the next several hundred years in a crappy relationship.

Beyond Strange Lands: An Audible Original - The audio was complete crap on half of the voices. Which is bad because this could’ve been better. It is a Pod Cast Show and the director couldn’t make sure everybody had decent recording equipment and the sound effects often drown out the actors.

Henrietta & Eleanor: A Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde: An Audible Original Drama - They were going for a modern telling, but the language used is archaic. They speak like Dickens characters even though they talk about cellphones and computers.

A Crazy Inheritance: The Ghostsitter book 1 - The concept is there, but it is too nerfed. It was made for the 8-12yo crowd in mind by people that don’t know how to write for children.

Tell Me Lies (Free Audio Book) - It really wants to be smart. Who’s playing who and who is the actual villain of this story? If you want a quick “who done it?” maybe look into it.

Evil Eye (Free on Audible Plus) - told through phone calls between a mother and daughter. The whole genera of evil boyfriends/husbands isn’t really my cup of tea, and the boyfriend’s actor was too fake and the set up to the meat of the story was annoying.

The Half-life of Marie Curie - I didn’t mind learning stuff about Marie Curie... falls squarely in “made for TV lifetime movie” quality though. You should not carry around a vile of uranium where ever you go.

Alone with the Stars - A girl in Florida hears the call for help from Amelia Earhart, but nobody listens to her. Part fiction, part biographical. It would’ve been better as a biography and talking about various conspiracy theories about what happened to her and finding the pieces of the airplane.

Beezer - The son of the Devil learning to become a good person with a found family... however, most of the characters are annoying.

The Year of Magical Thinking (Free Audio Book) - very heavy on the subjects about loss and death.

Complete Garbage.

The Getaway (Free Audio Book) - A man being a POS by stalking and abducting women. It broadcasts just about everything that is going to happen.

Agent 355 (Free Audio Book) - Do you like “American Mythology?” Like the whole “the founders are the greatest people in the world” kind of vibe? I don’t. I also hate the main character for being one of those “i’m smart, because i read books that women aren’t supposed to” girls when she doesn’t really think for herself at all.

#myu reads #books read in 2020 #audiobooks #booklr #Audible #long post

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radiantresplendence · 4 years

Text

The Case for Blue Mage Naminé

So, I was talking with @acclerated-railgun the other day and the topic of Naminé as a playable character or party member in Kingdom Hearts games post-KH3 came up, specifically in the context of what role she would fill. A classic Black or White Mage, as well as a Red Mage role were quickly put out as possibilities, but I landed in a much more interesting place after some thought: The Blue Mage.

Consider a typical Blue Mage (using the official art from FFXIV for reference)...

Nobodies in Kingdom Hearts are based off of Final Fantasy character classes; it would stand to reason that Naminé would be no different. However, I think that the role a Blue Mage could fill would fit her character as well as a role that the characters thus far in the series are missing. In other words, it would ensure that Naminé maintains her motif of of quirks that set her apart from the rest of the cast without alienating herself as well as providing unique boons useful to the player or players.

At its simplest, a Blue Mage is a wizard who specializes in replicating the otherwise exclusive arts that bosses or monsters can use. Most often, it’s called the Blue Mage, but occasionally the Final Fantasy series calls it something different like the Gun Mage or the Bravely games’ Vampire or Catmancer jobs. Either way, even if less prevalent than its red cousin, it’s still a classically-recurring class in the series.

This fits Naminé due to her status as a “Special Nobody” and a “witch with power over Sora's memories and those around him.” Essentially, she’s all but guaranteed to have potent spellcasting abilities and she’s a unique specimen of the monsters of nothingness that make up a significant portion of the series’ enemies and bosses. Naminé having the ability to utilize the moves of some of her Nobody kin as well as possibly those of some of the other monsters in the setting shouldn’t be out of the question, as fundamentally she is one of those monsters, and an exceptional specimen among exceptional specimens of those creatures at that. After all, she is the Nobody of a Princess of Heart, something which shouldn’t normally be possible on top of being limited in the number of original selves who can even fit that criteria, not to mention the fact that she is a greater Nobody, able to keep a human form while most of her kind just turn into monsters subservient to their greater kin.

Keeping in line with her unique memory witchcraft, a Blue Mage Naminé would have normally unique spells like White Wind for healing instead of a more typical Cure and Flamethrower instead of Fire. She could also use the Blue Mage’s Learn ability to replicate special (but not ultimate or desperation) moves from bosses or some of the other characters in the game. For example, she could learn Meteorain from Cloud, but not Omnislash or Riku’s multi-Dark Firaga move that he uses in KH2 and KH3. A more standard enemy attack that she could possibly make frequent use of would be Xemnas’s thorns of nothingness that he fires as projectiles. Think of them operating as a ranged basic attack, kind of like a slower-rate, piercing variant of arrowguns with a combo finisher that spawns multiple lines of thorns around whatever she’s targeting which collapse onto the target in an attempt to juggle it into the air or something. Or you could give her a keyblade, but I personally find that a little less appealing. Protect smile, keep best witch unique. (Maybe instead of a weapon have her equip different art sets that changes her mood and thus the manifestation of her powers. It’s a good idea, if a bit of an afterthought that I had while writing this.)

From a more general gameplay perspective, give her spells that inflict some of the weirder status effects that the series uses inconsistently, like blind, sleep, stunned, burned, poisoned, etc. Damage over time effects could scale based on percent of a full health bar and her level instead of base stats to keep her competitive casually, and the damage over time would function well in level 1 higher difficulty runs. (For example, a flamethrower spell would deal fire damage based on her magic stat and then burn for 1+[her level divided by 10] percent of a health bar rounded up per tick for so many seconds. Obviously this could be further refined, but a level 99 Naminé’s damage over time from a spell could chunk pretty considerably while a level 1 Naminé would be incentivized to keep her effect up at all times, because each instance would be like a quarter of a health bar or more in exchange for 1 spell.)

To make her healing distinct as well, maybe give her a spell that provides slow healing over time like cura did in 358 Days/2 that could also provide temporary immunity to status conditions, with a possible downside being that she lacks something like a curaga that can revive downed allies and restore everyone to full HP in one spell. Or limit her healing to a more standard White Wind for multi target healing and status condition removal and Angel Whisper that gives moderate single target healing plus a temporary protection against dying like a Kupo Coin or raises a downed target with half health. White Wind could require a channel to cast and Angel Whisper could require being very close to the target for balancing as well as appropriate flavor.

Now for the important bit, the redesign.

Naminé has had the same design since her introduction: largely plain white dress, patterned trim at the hem and sandals. I think, to a point, her look is iconic, but does need an update. To emphasize her status as Blue Mage and connection to water, I would give her dress some baby blue trim, possibly with a gradient from white to blue. I’ve noticed that there aren’t many girls in the series wearing stockings, despite being a clearly anime-inspired game, so I’d consider a pair that is light grey or off-white to show that she originated as a creature of nothingness rather than light or dark. I’d give her grey boots to coincide with most of the other girls in the series having boots or moving from shoes to boots as the series progresses.

I would also give her a blue jacket with black lining that she wears open, giving her more going on in the torso of her design to balance out the additions that I made to the lower part of her outfit. The goal would be to have the contrast between the black lining of the coat and the white of her dress catch the attention of the player. The general gradient of the outfit would go from bold and dynamic contrast up top to a more subtle color transition at the bottom. Generally speaking I’d aim to transition her image color from “white” to “white and blue” while making her design pop a little more.

For design changes of her head, I’d give her slightly longer hair and a bit more mature facial structure. Its been a year between the end of KH3 and Limitcut Episode, and she’s a teenager growing up in a RPG, so she’s grown out her hair with the intention of distancing her look from that reminiscent of Kairi. She is a different person from her original self after all and her look should assert that. Where Kairi’s KH3 look is over-the-top cute with a hint of a tomboyish aftertaste, I’d like Naminé‘s to be more distinctly feminine and cool with a conventionally Square Enix flavor. If more Kingdom Hearts characters wore hats, I’d even top it off with a navy blue witch’s hat. I go back and forth on that though, so maybe just in certain worlds conducive to headwear like Pirates of the Caribbean and Halloween Town. The series designs since KH1 have always had a bit of an overdesigned flavor, so I hope I mostly channeled that.

Anyways... Naminé should really be a Blue Mage. I think it’d work really well and I really think that after how much of an afterthought she was in KH3 that she gets a little more respect in future games. Also I’d really like her to be a party member. It’d be really nice to see her actually be a member of the group with her friends in more than just the game’s ending cutscene.

#kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts 3 #kingdom hearts remind #naminé #thank naminé #namine #blue mage #thank namine #kingdom hearts chain of memories #final fantasy #keyblade #creative writing #not necessarily creative writing but this is how i tag things to keep it organized #disney #pirates of the caribbean #final fantasy xiv #square enix #monster girl

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mythvoiced · 4 years

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which muse is the trickiest to get into character for? why were you drawn to each one of your characters?

@theimpalpable | — ⊱asks for muns with a multimuse or more than one muse⊰

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-. Which muse is the trickiest to get into character for? I think that would be Patrick, which is quite something considering I keep stubbornly referring to him as my main muse - some main muse he is, fickle as he continues to be - and that is mostly because I keep struggling with connecting the different versions of Patrick that exist within my head. I don’t remember if I’ve described this before, but Patrick is meant to be a character with a secret internal monologue, a secondary character if you will, or more fittingly a deuteragonist because he’s meant to be experienced from an outsider’s point of view.

His manners, his facial expressions, his tensed nature, how quickly he dons and sheds personas, they don’t have quite the effect they’re meant to have if you can read his internal monologue.

This heavily contrasts with my writing style, though, that is characterised by a lot of dipping into said internal monologue, or even if it’s not a monologue and described from a 3rd person point of view, there’s still too much of that insight, those references that give enough hints to properly understand or get a hunch of what’s going on, when experiencing as I’d like him to get experienced can only be achieved by having NO HUNCH at all in regards to his thought process, his feelings, and everything related.

SO, it’s difficult getting into character because I’m constantly with one foot in and one foot out of his mental space.

-. Why were you drawn to each one of your characters? THIS one will be a TAD long, please forgive me ♥ I can start by saying that all my muses with mythological roots, specifically of the Norse, drew me in because of my adoration for the mythology that functions as the source of their base, starting from Patrick who kickstarted my obsession with everything Norse.

Many other characters pull me in because of their standpoint on things, their emotional journeys and their psychology: from Seona who’s hurt translating into unapologetic anger makes her so interesting to write, to Jungwoo and Taejoo who are just trying to survive and disappear within or from society, depending on which one you focus on, and so on and so forth.

And others just... provide me with a challenge I didn’t know I was looking for.

I can do a quick rundown (initial reasons, won’t list things that relate to subsequent changes):

Cesare: his 'caged animal’-like attitude towards just about anything and anyone he encounters, the way aggression used to be his first defence and the psychological divide between trauma-born reactions and natural werewolf instincts. Seona: her restless rage and the contrast between her actions and the person she’s justifying them with. Diana: I wanted a valkyrie and I love her ongoing identity crisis and how violently she defends herself against it. Eunjae: I can’t remember if the mind-reading or the social worker came before, might have happened at the same time, but the idea of an emotionally extremely reserved social worker with mind-reading abilities and a hidden past just has me going buck wild, everything from their attitude to their circumstances to their secrets has so much potential for so many different directions they could be taken into. Domenico: dorky vampire Caleb: Initially I just wanted a hunter muse again, but when I came up with his Sight and started developing his personality, I guess I just can’t get enough of a naturally self-denying and self-sacrificial person with a nurturing demeanour who is also Very Woke on issues and has, you know, those abilities. Sunhee: Lotte’s story gave me the opportunity to introduce someone who has to live through the repercussions of what happened to a loved one Catharina: sells info, steps on men’s feet with her heels, untrustworthy and wicked smart Yoshino: dorky tanuki with no sense of responsibility whatsoever Nathaniel: a challenge to myself, someone who’s views on morality I can’t justify with a traumatic past, he just is and just thinks the way he is and does, without redeemable reason Eros: writing him feels like watching a lover run their hand over silken drapes as they recite love poems with bittersweet undertones to their lover waiting for them in bed Samuel: always wanted an author muse and his ability came to me at random really, so I love the idea of combining the basics of his character with a personality trait I haven’t dived in a lot: inability to act Quincy: dorky time-traveller with very grey morals, sort of toeing the line between good and not so good Haniel: I wanted an angel who is so convinced with the idea that they’re doing good and doing it the right way too, that they’re fallen as a punishment to the very thing they thought was the most praiseworthy part of their attitude, someone who’s so convinced with her ideals she doesn’t realise how many people she’s hurting and damning Muninn: I love Norse mythology Jungwoo: when I first made him, I wanted to dwell into a representation of PTSD I hadn’t yet: plenty of my muses have PTSD, have been through things, but most of them are “””high-functioning”””; with Jungwoo, I wanted to explore not dealing with one’s symptoms well, living one’s own live passively and according to said symptoms, rather than with them; Jungwoo’s passivity is the core of his character and the things I’d like to explore, his passivity and his exhaustion Corey: neglected prodigy with enough good in his heart to not realise how angry he could be Kaeden: I love Goblin and grim reaper lores in general, and I’ve actually given writing a reaper shots before (Han, for one), so I thought I’d give it another one, but divert from the traditional exploration of reaper lore by having him... well... refuse to reap; when I came up with his backstory, the life of Kiha, my interest only grew because it opened such a vast amount of things to work with and also inspired me to connect more muses the way I had Kiha & Seona Lotte: initially, Lotte’s base characterisation was... my love song to the moon, everything I wrote about him, his appearance, his demeanour, his voice, his movements, was meant to remind or be compared to the moon, never equalled; I think that’s why his original concept didn’t inspire me to actually write him a lot, because it lacked a backstory beyond said concept; now though, with the memory loss added, and his indirect connection to Jungwoo, well, I’m dying to write him at all times Taejoo: I’ve always wanted to write a telekinetic character and this was the opportunity to do so; initially, though, Taejoo was meant to be a less... morally excusable character, his original concept depicted him as a character who felt marginalised for his abilities and thought himself not forced to abide by the rules & morals of the world that marginalised him, as a result; then, though, when I sat down and wrote out his full backstory, and added those little details, he lost most of that disinterest towards his peers and developed a near-obsessive nature to create or avoid certain impressions people may have in his regards; while the core of his concept is still ‘just trying to survive in a world that doesn’t want him for something he can’t change’, it is now driven forward by the opposite of the original idea meaning submitting to the best of his abilities to his surroundings and the people living in them, and it’s something I’ve never written before, and its similarities and stark differences to Jungwoo’s attitude make it all the more interesting Nota: I’ll admit, I wanted a tragic character and as a result of this lack of a proper central concept, I don’t write him a lot; his two defining features, the abuse in his home and his wish to be a musician don’t... fit together well, they don’t tie into the other, they just co-exist within his character so there’s a lot I need to work on because at the moment I am NOT drawn in by his character Sabriel: I was on an angel-muse making spree and wanted a Yoon Jeonghan muse, so... the two things just kind of got together and Sabriel happened; when I started working a little on their abilities and especially when I fully established what their role was in Heaven, I was drawn in by the fun, high-spirited personality, combined with good intentions and the truly vast powers of the rest of their character created a fun contrast I couldn’t wait to explore: they’re simultaneously one of my most harmless and most powerful muses Junghoon: I wanted a detective muse :3 but as I started developing him and his personality came forward, he became a muse that worked perfectly with the concept of ‘the cards someone is handled in life doesn’t determine their worth or their abilities’, to have such a studious & ambitious muse with ADHD who continues to look forward no matter what may be thrown his way, without showing anything but gratitude towards the things he’s given, and also having enough confidence to hold his own ALMOST unapologetically, he became a Great Guy basically; but I’ll be honest, I simply adore writing his personality, it speaks to me so well and is always something that gives me joy Kangmin: I wanted a perfectionist and the opportunity to explore how ‘all work and no play’ is detrimental to a person and not something that should be considered praiseworthy, how a solely work-oriented lifestyle can lead to an excessive amount of negativity with little to no rewards; the addition of past health problems, I’m not quite sure where it came from, and Kangmin themself has actually softened from what they were originally meant to be like (not excessively, simply more likely to NOT snap than SNAP as they were meant to be) and all in all they’ve become rather melancholic and something about this air surrounding them keeps drawing me in Beomsoo: another psychological aspect I was intrigued to explore: the absolute denial people can get stuck in during their grief, and the extremes to which a human mind would go to protect itself from a reality it can’t cope with; Beomsoo’s generally positive or at the very least neutral outlook on life and how, from an outside perspective, he seems to be a regular guy living a somewhat regular life, while in reality he’s denying something so big that it goes as far as fabricating memories to keep the pretences up, well, it’s quite interesting Chulsoo: I sincerely have no idea at the moment. That may be because he’s so fresh, but, I think continuously re-watching Love Me Harder might have had something to do with it, because I could feel the MV was inspiring me to write s o m e t h i n g, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what. Then I just… thought to make something up on the spot and kind of roll with whatever idea would stick first et viola, out came Chulsoo. Now he draws me in because he’s becoming meaner than anticipated, which is always an interesting turn of event

So, here is a rundown that was anything but quick, I am so sorry

#theimpalpable #;ooc #;to be tagged #GOD THANK YOU SO HECKING MUCH I'M #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOr sending these in and so sorry about the length #thank you for letting me ramble about my darlings ♥♥♥♥♥#if you reblog it too PLS LET ME KNOW #I WANNA SEND SOME TOO #a:#;queue

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lunawings · 5 years

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Island Fiesta Event Report 9/7/2019

So I finally got to go to an Island Fiesta! The series I went for was King of Prism.

This post is going to be long (and includes a lot of sea animals) because I want to talk about the event experience in general for people who may be thinking of going in the future. If you just want to read about the dolphin show with Junta Terashima and Taku Yashiro skip to the end.

So Attraction Fiesta, or Island Fiesta depending on where it takes place (https://atfes.com/), is a new sort of event that popped up a few years ago. Basically they will sell anime merch at some tourist attraction, causing a bunch of fans to buy tickets and hang out at said attraction/area and spend money for that day. They call it Island Fiesta when it takes place on Hakke Island in Yokohama. Or at least that’s the gist of what I have gathered?? Back when they first started doing it, I think it was only just merch? I usually try and talk myself out of going long distance to events just to buy things. But they have been adding more features, like collab food and riddle solving games. And then they started doing actual events with voice actors, including a dolphin prism show.

DOLPHIN

PRISM

SHOW

So that was basically that. I decided I NEEDED to make it out to one of these at some point. I’d been waiting a year or so for one of them to fall on a good weekend and one finally did. So off I went.

I wasn’t sure how early I needed to get there in the morning for the merch line. At first I thought it may not be so bad, but then I realized.... King of Prism wasn’t the only thing that was gonna be featured. There were eleven other series to buy merch from that day... and we’d likely all be in the same line...................

I ended up getting there at 8:45 (it opened at 9:30), and got a ticket for merch that said 11:10.

I thought this wasn’t so bad for coming “late”.

But I also mistakenly thought they would be letting small waves of people in every 10 or 20 minutes like other events I had been to. But no, they actually let in big groups of like 100 people an hour (the 11:10 block had numbers 1 to 100 or so and we were supposed to line up roughly in that order), so after lining up at 11:10 I did not get out until like.... 1:45-2ish.......... and most of that was standing outside in summer because September is still summer in Japan. (At least we were in the shade though.)

The event had a loose Halloween theme and the Kinpri boys were vampires. I only got one Shin, but it was the acrylic strap which was really good. TBH though I was actually a bit more excited about the Ace stuff I got. Because I’m not that big of a fan of the artwork they did for Shin this time, and this is my first Ace merch EVER.

They actually had a trading area for merch, which is kinda rare. It’s much more common for events to forbid trading altogether. ( So usually we just have to make… sHaDy dEAliNgs… Which has never made sense to me. I’ll buy MORE if I think maybe I can trade it with people…)

But when I went over to the officially sanctioned trading area it was kinda small and looked like the same people had been camping out there all day probably. Plus nobody had signs for what they wanted out and I am pretty self conscious about initiating trades out of the blue. I checked Twitter just in case but found only people who were looking FOR Shin (pulls collar) instead of wanting to spare him and quickly gave up.

(I th.. I think there may have been a shift in popularity since SSS but maybe I’ll discuss that later…)

So the atmosphere of this event was rather strange.

The merch line/trading area was as crowded and hectic from very early morning onward as any big time anime event I have been to.

But the rest of the park....

Was pretty empty.

Well, okay, it got more full as the day went on. I took these photos around 9:30 - 10:30 am. (I happen to find empty amusement park photos more interesting than lively ones.) But still.

There was an interesting divide in the park patrons. On the one hand you had all the fangirls (+about 4 or 5 fanboys yes there were that few) wandering around with itabags, and then the regular families just enjoying an amusement park haha. Of the fangirls, there was also a divide between King of Prism and.... non. Because it was easily like 70% King of Prism. But I suppose a.) I notice Kinpri fans a lot easier (sometimes I’m not sure what someone is here for. then I notice a tacky flamingo on their bag and it’s like I GOT YOU) and b.) This day was the dolphin prism show so there was probably a significantly higher concentration of Kinpri fans this day than other days. But still. I’m not used to King of Prism being one of the big dogs.

So, I couldn’t tell you what the second most popular series was since I didn’t really recognize any of the others. Although what I can tell you is that for whatever reason the Yumeiro Cast merch actually started selling out first. (The King of Prism stuff followed after.)

They had some food collabs, but the Kinpri vampire pizza was already sold out by the time I got out of the merch line. (So I just got non-Kinpri pizza and thought about King of Prism while I ate it. My stomach didn’t know the difference.) None of the other collab food sold out I think.

Now, about the attraction itself.

The proper name for this place is Yokohama Hakkejima Sea Paradise. It’s a pretty interesting and quirky aquarium/theme park.

Coming up to this event I was a bit worried I’d have nothing to do all day since I was getting in early for merch but the dolphin show wasn’t until evening. I wasn’t planning on merch taking over two hours though, so I actually only barely had time to see most of the attractions and just breezed through the main aquarium. Still, it doesn’t take much time for me to look at a fish anyhow. (I just may have kinda wasted my all-access day pass is all.)

You can get up really close to dolphins and penguins and all sorts of animals and pet them because.... sure??

They also really like animals in tubes. Or you going through tubes to look at animals.

seal tube

(seal tube from above)

penguin tube (walk through a tube while penguins are over you)

penguin tube from above

dolphin tube (walk through a tube while dolphins swim over you)

view from manta ray escalator (you take an escalator while manta rays swim over you)

otter tube (the otters were able to cross over into the river exhibition next to them)

they didn’t really feel like ottering at the time though

It’s not a Japanese aquarium without capybaras.

(If you’ve ever been to a Japanese aquarium you’ll know that’s serious.)

They also had this section where you could like... catch fish or shellfish and then eat it right there??? Because.... Japan.

I didn’t do that part.

But anyway.

flamingos

and another fish tube

So this was a pretty neat attraction with or without the King of Prism stuff. I kind of like it when my anime drags me to do neat things I would not have done otherwise.

So after looking at fish and things, lining up for two hours for merch, and looking at fish and things some more, it was finally time for the

dOlPHin priSM SHow

Much like for merch we lined up in accordance with the numbers on our tickets. There were no assigned seats but we all had to file into the stadium roughly in order.

My number was just about in the middle, meaning all of the good center seats were taken when I got in. So I decided to opt to sit a little off to the side in order to be closer. This was a good decision because I happened to choose the side they came out (and left from) which got a good scream out of me when I realized.

Unfortunately I didn’t think to bring penlights. I didn’t see the Tweet saying they were allowed until I was already on the train the day before. But realizing I’d only need red and orange anyway, at least I was able to hit up the 100 yen store for some glowsticks.

(It just didn’t occur to me that outdoor + daytime = penlights even though King of Prism. Being daylight it was hard to tell the difference between red and orange haha but oh well. It’s true doesn’t feel like a King of Prism event without them.)

Before the show began we were all given an introduction about manners for the show voiced by Kakeru and Shin, to which we all responded eagerly out loud as King of Prism fans always do. (Kakeru: Rule number one! Audience: ONE!!!!!!, Kakeru (something like): Don’t throw penlights, etc. Audience: OKAY!!!!!!!!! etc. I love this fandom.)

So this whole dolphin prism show thing started a year ago maybe? This is the third or fourth time they have done it. It’s always Junta Terashima and *insert other SePTENTRION member(s)*

So this time it was him and Taku Yashiro, and it was Taku’s first time doing it. (So basically Vi Va Vacance! But the song they ended up playing for the dolphin show was Brilliant Oath. But they gotta promote the newest CD and all that.)

You could tell Junta and Taku only rehearsed this like right before, if.... at all....? (Probably not at all.) And there were a lot of parts nobody quite thought through. Haha it was so candid. But that’s how I like to see them.

They started off the event by doing a King of Prism quiz. The audience could help out but it was mostly the two of them answering the questions A or B.

One of the questions was if the number of likes on the mock social media merch below referred to Edel Rose’s debut or the number of “King of Prism elite”.

Realizing the number was greater than the population of the world, they guessed correctly that it was Edel Rose’s debt.

At one point they each had to fill in the line for the other’s character of what their proposal was in SSS episode 12. And then they each read their’s in character.

Taku couldn’t read one of the kanji characters in Kakeru’s ahahahh..... (neither could I). He also almost misspelled “showtime” when signing an autograph.

Speaking of which, after the quiz they both autographed the big uchiwa fans with A and B written on them that they had used to answer. But clearly nobody had though this through either, because the floor was wet so they couldn’t put anything down. So they had to like awkwardly put their scripts between their legs and fumble with their microphones while they tried to sign them. Junta kept apologizing about their awkward fumbling AS IF it was even possible for them to be wasting our time. They probably gave us like an extra 3 minutes with them so I thought it was beautiful hahaha.....

(Photo from Junta Terashima’s official Twitter.)

Junta “won” the quiz, and his prize was two dolphins.

“Oh a pink one!!” (said kind of excitedly) “And a… normal one…” (said with the tone of “it’s what I… always wanted??”)

I guess he unloaded the “normal one” on Taku after the show.

(And then they kissed.)

Then after the quiz the actual dolphin show started. But this was also something nobody thought through. (I think they were at the back stage for previous events, but this time they were at the front?) Because both of them had to RUN when they realized they were about to get completely soaked with the first big dolphin jump. (They were both kinda like OH SHII-- and barely got out of the way in time.)

The dolphin show was set to Brilliant Oath like I mentioned before. It wasn’t really all that choreographed to match the music, but I imagine with dolphins that couldn’t be an easy thing to do anyhow. There were two moments that definitely seemed like they were probably intentional though: The big jump at the end, and when one dolphin brought a hula hoop ring to the stage right at “suki da yoooooo”. The rest of the show was probably no different than their usual dolphin show. But let me tell you, they sure did a whole lot of crazy flips and jumps. The combination of prism show x dolphins all of a sudden made a lot of sense.

After the show Junta and Taku went to the back stage where the trainers were (”THE DOLPHINS ARE SO CLOSE” - Junta) and were given the opportunity to give them a hand signal to jump.

They discussed what to say while giving the hand signal, and Taku jokingly suggested “We found natural gas!”

In the end of course it was “Ready sparking!” and the audience participated as well.

After the dolphins and trainers left, Junta and Taku came to the front again to wrap up the show. Junta let us know it was almost over, to which the audience of course let out a “whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat” and he was like “I love hearing that thank you.”

He also joked that the show we saw was so good we may have released the seal on Shine. AND then when they were laughing about together he voiced Shin being like “No! Stop!” or something like that. It was so random and came so quickly from nowhere I couldn’t help but laugh. This may sound out of character for me, but when Junta Terashima is voicing Shin in pain but he has this huge smile on his face it just cracks me up. If you don’t understand, maybe you haven’t seen his smile. It’s amazing.

I also had no idea it was cool for him to just mention Shine like that. But then again, if they have Shine curry at AmoCafe then I guess it’s not officially classified as a a spoiler anymore.

The show ended up being about an hour. Which was way longer than I thought it would be and incredibly worth the trip.

I might have briefly caught Junta Terashima’s eye when they were leaving and/or entering the stadium. It’s fairly reasonable to think that I may have since they were right in front of me and a.) I’m a white girl in a sea of Japanese people and b.) I had a Shin doll in my boobs. (Okay tucked in my sweatshirt, not that risque, but still.)

I know the chances of him both seeing me AND remembering me are pretty slim, but I really hope he did. Because the last time I saw him in person was at one of the greeting shows for SSS Part 1. Between then and now, a lot has happened. Part 4 came out, and I read an interview where he said he felt bad for Shin fans multiple times over what happened.

I just want him to know that I’m still here and I’m still supporting Shin.

What a day.

PS. do seals always swim upside down or is this one just bored

#king of prism #kinpri #attraction fiesta #attraction festa #king of prism sss #king of prism shiny seven stars #junta terashima #taku yashiro #yashiro taku #terashima junta

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mazanica · 5 years

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So I felt a desire to list some, though not all because that would take too long, of my AUs. So here are main AUs and some favourite AUs of mine!

MAIN AUs

(includes AUs I’ve yet to write or publish, but have planned out, and links to the ones started/that have anything written for them)

Phantom Watchers (Aliens AU): TW- Contains mental, emotional and physical abuse of a child. Bandi Cator is the son of General Commander Akrai Cator and Head Doctor of Sciences Aniya Martel, of the planet Lapinia. He isn’t sure who he really is, but it’s never mattered before... until he wakes up on a strange planet, alongside 11 others... and a mysterious group watching from the skies. (xx)

One Stormy Night on Lakeview Road (Vampire AU): When Goldie and his friends were children, they went into the old abandoned mansion on Lakeview Road and met the long-missing Fischbach family, whom they knew for only a single stormy night. Twelve years later, Goldie is the only one who remembers everything that happened that night and to believe that it was real- and he is the first to figure out just what was really living in the abandoned mansion. (xx)

Beneath Their Masks (High School AU): TW- CONTAINS SEVERE ABUSE, from physical, mental/psychological, emotional and sexual. Also contains cliques and highschool bullying. Spring and his friends are trying to survive their final year of highschool without anyone finding out their little secrets. Goldie and his friends are trying to enjoy their final year of just “being kids.” However, when new science teacher Mike Schmidt partners Spring’s group with members of the Fazgang, cracks begin to form and their classmates see right through them. (5 different parts; xx)

Division (Elemental/Magic AU): In a world divided into those who have Powers (Pazons) and those who don’t (Norands), two different rebellions are rising up... but they take completely opposite approaches and innocent people get hurt. One group of highschool students caught in the crossfire is about to learn the ugly truth of the world they live in and that nothing is what it seems. (xx)

Circuits to Flesh (Paranormal-esque reincarnation-ish horror AU): Freddy Fazbear and all who stepped through his door was always meant to have a tragic end. After the Mangle bit Jeremy Fitzgerald, the Toys were slated to be destroyed and the Originals sent to the old location again. However, rather than bemoan their fates, the Toys choose to spend their last hours fixing their older counterparts and making right what was wrong. This simple act of kindness changes everything. Fate has something else in store for them. For all of them. But they have to earn it. (xx)

Ribbons (Android AU): Many years ago, droids rose up and rebelled against their organic creators, and the survivors retreated into the places their mechanic creations could not follow; the wet forests, the blazing deserts and the freezing tundras. However, as the androids advanced and redesigned themselves and created new droids, they found a way to overcome the flaws of their “ancestors.” With sealed, synthetic skins, stabilizing fluid and a highly realistic appearance, the war between organics and droids continues. At least, that’s what Blu has always been taught- but when he meets and gets to know Bonnie, a Droid, it becomes clear that things aren’t so black and white. (xx xx xx)

Pennies AU: Bonnie, Freddy and Goldie are highly successful musicians who feel like they’ve lost something. They return to their hometown, Durmont, where a string of disappearances around Alban Creek have been happening the last 12 or so years. Bonnie remembers the first kid who disappeared when they were only around 5 or 6, whom he had spoken to the same morning he disappeared- the same morning of Bonnie’s mother’s funeral- and goes to Alban Creek with Freddy and Goldie... where they find themselves falling into another world. (xx)

CANON AUs

Aftermath Verse: After the murders, the Toys made a terrible choice and the OGs can only try and finish what they started. (just look through my Aftermath Verse tag lol)

Shadowed Verse: The Shadows play a game and Blue and Red are the ones who suffer.

Mending Bridge: Mike Schmidt returns to Freddy Fazbear’s to unravel the secrets of his past, in the process saving all of their futures.

Forever Five Nights: Mike Schmidt tells his granddaughters the story of how he befriended the animatronics through small acts of kindness.

Timeline (Unnamed): When something threatens to unravel all of time, Mike, Jeremy, Scott and the animatronics are chosen to save the multiverse. However, a difficult choice must be made- one where no one knows the outcome of. (Only includes FNaF 1-4 and explores the idea of a Redeemable!Purple Guy) (xx)

ANTHRO AUs

SCY-FY

Like I have 30 Phantom Watcher AUs it isn’t funny so I’m not even gonna list them (maybe if you really beg to see them all but some of them are literally the same AU but if one detail was different so-)

Starlight Dream: Similar to Phantom Watchers, it’s an Alien AU. However, Bonnie is an alien and Blu is not. Bonnie, a Lacatran Soldier fighting for Lacatran Independence from Lapinia, crash lands on Earth, right in Bonito (Blu) Rodriguez’ field. Blu brings the alien into his home and tends to his wounds, and begins to teach Bonnie Earthen cultures.

Project Xeros: Blu is an alien. A sexless, species-less alien known as the Xeros, one of the many products of Project Xeros; designed and bioengineered by a race intent on galactic domination, the Xeros can take the form of any species they have seen and touched in their true forms, and within a few generations any chosen planet would be completely wiped out as the Xeros multiply. However, upon discovery, the Xeros were ordered destroyed by the Galactic Alliance. Blu is one of the few survivors, and ends up on Earth in the company of Bonnie Henderson, a farmer’s son who, despite dreams of life on a stage, has taken over the family business after his parents’ untimely passing. (I think I’ve posted 1 or 2 things about this AU on tumblr...)

Stargate Atlantis AU: In which the cast end up discovering the lost city of Atlantis... in another galaxy. Spring, a young, mysterious and strangely brilliant scientist with a powerful Ancient Gene, is recruited into the Stargate Program where he goes to Atlantis under the leadership of Freddy Fazbear and his brother Goldie. Life on Atlantis is always an adventure, and it isn’t long until everyone on the voyage begins to lose their Earthen identities as they mingle with the locals of this new galaxy- from the strange bear “Red” who lives on the Atlantis mainland, to the Chickens of Avia whom become their main ally....

Dystopia/Droid AU: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy are Droids built in the 23rd century. They watched the fall of Man shortly after their creation, but they sleep through the centuries under the careful watch of the Tower’s AI, “Goldie.” One day, many centuries later in the 27th century, Red, Blue, Chirp and Mangle (and those are not nicknames; simply words that have been found, but meanings lost, from the Old Writings, as language has changed over time) live just outside the ruins of an ancient and great city. The know it as a forbidden place, as it’s from the era of Hubris. However, they choose to explore the old tower at the center of everything, and unknowingly fix what had been broken- unintentionally waking of the vestiges of the past that everyone wishes had been forgotten...

More Droid AU: There are different types of Droids; Service Droids, Rally Droids and Kindred Droids. Service Droids are Droids built to fulfill specific jobs, such as factor work or servant work or farm work. Rally Droids are Droids made for fighting, like Droid Wrestling or something. Kindred are Droids built for people who either cannot have children of their own, or want a child they can mold perfectly into what they desire. The first two of these are not meant to be sentient, but they became sentient over time. Kindred are meant to mimic people as realistically as possible, to the point where their parts “grow” over time so the parents get the full raising-a-child experience- just feed them metal, keep them up-to-date at a doctor (mechanic), and you’re good. Except... none of the Droids are happy with this arrangement. Blu is a Kindred who desires more out of life than what his “parents” want him to be, and Bonnie is a Rally Droid who, after losing a match and being badly damaged, is bought by Blu’s parents as a sort of “bodyguard” and “companion” for their sheltered Kindred. However, the two begin to learn from each other...

False (Human AU): The world (of anthros) is a simulation, and in order to see what’s really happening, you have to die without dying- i.e. die before your body dies, without the script, so that the world resets back to before you died... and for the briefest of moments, where you are, you wake up. And only those who “died” and woke up, even just for a second, remember or realize it was ever reset at all. Blu has figured it out long ago, and Bonnie has always had a sense of something being wrong...

FANTASY AUs

Soulmates; Words: TW contains child abuse and neglect. In which the first words your soulmate ever says to you is written on your body. Bonnie and all his friends have very interesting tattoos. Blu and his friends have equally interesting tattoos. However, none of them believe soulmates are tied together, and a few of them have personal reasons to avoid it at all costs...

Soulmates; Colours: In which you can’t see the colour of your soulmate’s eyes until your eyes meet.

Soulmates; Voice (PW AU): In which you can hear the voice of your soulmate in your mind, and speak to them through the link. Blu and Bonnie are a Lapinian and a Lacatran, and on the night of the last Lacatran uprising, where Blu’s father razed over 50 Lacatran villages, including Bonnie’s, the link connects Blu to a hysterical Bonnie. Over time, the two become friends and learn each other’s secrets, perhaps even falling in love along the way, but neither see how they will ever even meet, let alone be together. Until the day they wake up on a planet far away from home, not even ten feet from one another...

Soulmates; Red Strings (PW AU): In which the red strings of fate tie everyone together, and some people can see them; thin red lines, tied to everyone’s middle finger and fading away, extending across the ground to places unseen... or to the person a few feet away. A young Lapinian, Blu, has always been able to see them, and he has always known he was different- because instead of going across the ground, his string went straight up into the sky. He’s met only a handful of people like him, whose string goes into the sky and who can see them. He’s curious, but when he finds the person on the other side of his string is a Lacatran....

Angels & Demons AU: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy and Goldie are demons. Red, Blue, Chii and Mangle are angels. Spring is... something else. No one really knows. But these two groups end up colliding in their assignments on Earth, and no one really knows what to do about it. Least of all them.

Accidental Demon Summoning (unnamed): TW Contains child abuse and elements of racism and bullying. Bonito “Blu” Rodriguez has just moved to the USA with his mother and new stepfather, leaving all his friends behind and starting at a new school. One day, after being locked in the attic by his irate mother, Blu finds some belongings from the tenants before them- some old candles and demonology books. Blu doesn’t believe in demons and he’s bored... so he decides to do it. However, he makes a terrible mistake; he doesn’t outline contract parameters. Therefore, when a demon actually appears, Blu is pretty sure everything is going to go pretty badly... but the demon decides to stick around, just to mess with him. Upon seeing what is happening, however, the demon decides to fulfil his contract anyway, and Blu is horrified to find that they now have a new classmate. Spring Salvage, a demon hunter and Blu’s first friend in America, isn’t pleased.

Long for the Sea: Bonnie has moved in with his father in an old town, and reunites with his childhood friends Freddy, Goldie, Chica and Foxy. However, he’s not the only new kid on the block; strange things happen around Spring and his group. It turns out that Spring, Blu, Shabon, Red and Chii are merfolk, and Mangle a benevolent sea witch, who have fled from a dangerous war for the Throne- which Spring, the crowned prince, cannot yet claim as his blood isn’t “mature” enough. So they bide their time, and Bonnie feels drawn to investigate...

Reincarnation AUs: I have a few of these actually, including one that has Blu remembering all his past lives and Bonnie remembering flashes of the last. Another one, however, is Bonnie and Blu are the reincarnations of a semi-famous historic couple, a lord and a lady, who died young and childless, almost perfect replicas of their past selves, and remembering the last ballad they wrote together... which only the current owner of the old historic house, Bonnie’s own uncle and direct descendent of the lord’s sister, knows.

Pirate AU: Foxy is the captain of one crew. Mangle is the captain of another. Spring is a dread pirate who retired and went into hiding years ago to care for his young son, whose mother (one of multiple lovers Spring had had at the time) died in childbirth. Some things happen that drags Spring out of retirement, causes Foxy’s crew to start searching for him, and makes Mangle’s crew go undercover in a large medieval city to find answers and save their “princess”...

Dragons AU: Bonnie is a dragon who can take human (er, rabbit) form. He fell in love, many years before, with the magic queen of the kingdom at the base of the mountain his horde of gold is in, and dedicated his life to serving her and her kingdom. However, a war that the kingdom was swiftly losing, even with the help of a magic dragon, threatened to tear everything apart, and Bonnie made a choice he never wanted to make; as a last ditch effort to save the queen, he used almost all of the rest of his magic, trapping him in his dragon form for over a hundred years, to send her through time, to a future where “you will be safe.” Now, nearly three hundred years in the future, long after peace has been made and the kingdom now lives under the rule of Ursius (now a country, rather than a planet lol) while maintaining its culture through festivals and historical plays and such (with the Ursian twin kings’ blessings) and the mystery of the missing queen, Blu lives with his family near the forest’s edge near the ruins of the ancient city, seeing the tip of the castle protruding just above the treeline. He has no memory of his past, but feels a strange longing to go there...

Historical Hero AU (NOT PW, all on one planet, the names are all countries): Bonnie is a Lacatran Warrior... from long in the past. He is credited with almost singlehandedly defeating the Lapinian Army, with just one snag; he fell on the battlefield and was never found. It’s a mystery that haunts everyone to modern times. In modern times, peace has for the most part been attained; Lacatra gained its independence from Lapinia as a direct result of Bonnie, Lapinia and Ursius and Lacatra are now all allies of one another, and only Lapinia is still run by a monarchy, under the close watch of a Council. Blu, attending the College of Arts and History in Lacatra, has always been looking into the mystery of “Where did Bonnie of Lacatra go?” Well, he gets his answer one day when he heads to his home near the Lacatra-Lapinia border and literally trips over an injured rabbit. The answer? “He somehow slipped through frikkin’ TIME.” Bonnie does not adjust to modern times well.

Zombie World AU: TW references child abuse and running away. Blu is living a pretty hard life when he ends up slipping through the gaps into a parallel dimension, just like his best friends who disappeared years before. This world is much like his own... except it has been many years since a zombie outbreak, and no one he knew in his world was ever born here. Now he must find a way back, but a desire to save his new friends causes some trouble... after all, if someone who was never meant to exist crosses dimensions, what happens then? (xx)

Pokemon AU: Blue began his journey to becoming a Pokemon master when he was young, but he doesn’t go it alone.

PARANORMAL AUs

GHOSTS AU: TW talks about past suicide and murder. Everyone’s a ghost. They’re all dead. Boom. Bam. Okay a little more on that, everyone knows ghosts exist, but they all seem to gather in this one area... and in this one town, where the barrier between the worlds is thinnest, the ghosts look just like anyone else. Sometimes you don’t even know you’re dead. But when it’s normal to have a dead classmate, things get weird. Deadly weird. The living and the dead were never meant to mingle, and bad things happen to the living who cross that line. So no one does. It’s pretty easy, though- the dead tend to ignore the living. Bonnie is new in town, coming to live with his father after his mother was murdered during a trip to the mountains, and he feels drawn to a certain group of students. Two groups of students, actually; the Fazgang, and Springtrap’s gang. However, he’s told from day 1 to not approach Springtrap’s gang... because they’ve been dead for over ten years, and simply going through the routines they’d had when alive. Yet he somehow gets the ghosts’ attention, something that was nigh on impossible for the living to do... but Bonnie begins noticing some strange things about himself, and his new friends. Maybe they aren’t as alive as they thought.

ANOTHER GHOST AU: Bonnie and his friends move into an old creaky house, and right off the bat Bonnie sees strange shit happening. He’s none too pleased, because no one else will believe him that they’re not alone in the house. However, something happens that brings it to everyone’s attention... there are ghosts living in the house. It doesn’t take long for Freddy to put together the pieces; these are the ghosts of the Fischbach Family, a family that was murdered over fifty years before and their bodies, save for a piece of one of their ears, was never found. Now they have to help the ghosts move on by finally, finally, solving the case of their murder. Except ghosts can be so cryptic and never tell you what you need to know...

YET AGAIN A GHOST AU: Well, kinda-ghost AU. It’s not really ghosts but it’s hard to explain. Basically some culty crap happened, and the man who funded the local high school, Samuel Salvage, died under mysterious circumstances, as did his entire family. Bonnie, a conspiracy theorist, has many theories as to what might have happened, but Goldie, who is having a hard time coping with his and Freddy’s parents’ divorce and failing his history class, could not care less. However, when he’s given a research assignment about the family as extra credit- his only chance to pass and graduate- he goes to the graveyard where the entire family- the two parents and all eleven of their children, whom died within 10 years of each other from unknown causes- is buried. He accidentally ends up standing on one of the graves, and from that point on he’s able to see and speak with Franklin “Spring” Salvage, one of Samuel Salvage’s sons, though he isn’t aware of his identity at first... and he begins to uncover a dark, dangerous secret that no one wants him to learn.

NORMAL WORLD

The Dome (Dystopia AU again): WARNINGS this AU contains classism taken to an extreme. All of society now lives in Dome, a city inside- well, a dome. There are two levels to the Dome; Above, where the elite live, and Below, where the lower classes struggle to survive under the dangerous iron fist of their totalitarian government. Freddy, Goldie and their friends have always lived Above, never knowing the horrors of what happens Below in their spacious, sunny scapes. However, a school project has them venturing Below for a documentary that turns out to be more dangerous than any of them ever imagined.

Circus AU: THE OG MAZANICA AU YO! CAN’T BELIEVE I ALMOST FORGOT LIKE. WARNING, THIS AU CONTAINS EXPLICIT RACISM. In a world where Anthros are legally considered little more than animals and have few protections and many discriminations, Freddy, Goldie, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy run a restaurant, with Mike as the owner on paper. Red, Spring, Blu, Chii and Mangle run a circus (along with Marion, BB, JJ and a few others) with Jeremy as the owner on paper. They’re both funded by the mysterious sponsors Shafred Umbre and Bonsha Shade, two of the rare “Animals” who made it in this world. So of course, it’s only a matter of time before these two groups meet... (xx)

OTHER

Narnia AU: Pretty self explanatory, but basically; Red, Blue, Chii and Mangle are four siblings who find themselves in another world, and they live out an entire life there...

Wrong Number, Thank You: WARNINGS this AU contains depression and suicidal ideation/attempts and mentions of self harm Sometimes a wrong number message can save a life, as Goldie learned when he accidentally messaged one of his classmates instead of his brother. After receiving some help on the math homework- and a picture of the notes with something suspicious in the background- Goldie makes it his goal to befriend and help this mysterious classmate.... if only he could figure out who it was. Meanwhile, Spring is frustrated with his nosy classmate, yet...

OKAY I HAVE A LOT MORE BUT THESE ARE SOME OF MY FAVOURITES, if you have any questions about any of them just shoot me a message and I’ll happily answer. I might add more later on so yeh. I have so many more lol... Now in Mazey’s Oneshot Collection there’s a ton already but I have like 10x that many so-

#FNaF AUs #Mazey's AUs #Go ahead and ask questions if you want #I REALLY REALLY LIKE TALKING ABOUT MY AUs OKAY

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whitewolfofwinterfell · 5 years

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Angel and Cordelia (Cangel) - an in-depth analysis of their relationship

Angel and Cordelia are a ship I never expected to ship before watching Angel, but since finishing the show around November, I’ve fallen in love with them (and the show generally) and wanted to compile a post where I could express all my thoughts and feelings about them. This meta will be very in-depth and is divided into 9 sections:

1. ‘Pensiver Face’: Opposites Attract - Will explore Angel and Cordelia’s personalities and the ways in which these two unlikely characters came together and brought out new and wonderful sides to each other.

2. ‘Help the Helpless’: Finding purpose - Discusses the way in which Angel and Cordelia found purpose in their lives through meeting and the creation of Angel Investigations.

3. ‘We’re family’: Belonging and Family - Insight into how Angel and Cordelia created a family and home with each other that provided them with a sense of belonging (perhaps for the first time in their lives).

4. ‘My Dearest Friend’: Friendship and Love - Looks at Angel and Cordelia’s friendship and how that was at the core of their relationship throughout the series.

5. ‘You’re not alone’: Emotional connection - Uncovers the profound emotional connection Angel and Cordelia established with each other.

6. ‘It’s the stars’: Everyone can see it - Reflects on the common ‘Everyone can see it’ trope and how that was important to Angel and Cordelia’s relationship.

7. ‘Were we in love?’: Romantic love - An exploration of when and how Angel and Cordy’s romantic feelings for each other developed.

8. ‘I’ll be seeing you’: Missed Opportunity - Analyses the writing in seasons 4 and 5, and the ways in which Angel and Cordelia’s relationship was hugely disadvantaged by the writing.

9. ‘There are no people like us’: Why Angel/Cordelia are misunderstood and live in Buffy/Angel’s shadow - Unpicks some of the common misconceptions I’ve seen about Angel and Cordy’s relationship and the how comparisons made between their relationship and Buffy and Angel’s is unfair and does a disservice to both couples.

As you can see, section 9 does discuss Buffy and Angel, because I really couldn’t discuss Angel and Cordelia without also talking about Angel’s relationship with Buffy since she was so significant to Angel. It won’t be anti-Buffy/Angel (because I’m a huge Bangel shipper, as anyone that follows me will know), but I just wanted to give a warning for those that are a big fan of the ship as you might not want to read. However, the primary focus throughout will be on Angel and Cordelia’s relationship on ATS (I don’t really give much focus to BTVS since their interactions were so brief and lacking).

Before we get into it, I wanted to say this post is long, (coming in at around 9k words, whew! I had more to say than I realised), so if you’re interested in reading you might want to grab a drink or a snack and make yourself comfortable.

1. ‘Pensiver Face’: Opposites Attract

What makes Angel and Cordelia’s relationship so special is that it’s between two unlikely characters who, on the surface are polar opposites, but that compliment each other beautifully. Cordelia was specifically chosen to be a regular on ATS because she was the opposite to Angel - Whedon stated that Cordelia’s bright smile was needed to counteract Angel’s broody persona (x). The fundamental differences in Angel and Cordelia’s personalities meant that together they brought out different sides to each other. Angel was known for being reserved, contemplative, melancholy, deep and pessimistic, whilst in contrast Cordelia was known for being outgoing, bubbly, outspoken, shallow and optimistic.

Both characters came to ATS season 1 displaying these characteristics which they were well-known for on BTVS, but through meeting each other, they changed. Angel smiled more with Cordelia than arguably any other character in the Buffyverse (x) (x) (x) (x). Her infectious personality, witty sense of humour and straight-talking attitude coaxed him out of his shell. Also, because he was more submissive by nature, Angel responded to Cordelia’s assertiveness - she wasn’t afraid to take charge, call him out on things, make demands of him and ensure he stayed on the right path. She was the one that took charge of the business, launching Angel Investigations from practically nothing; she persuaded Angel that he should pay Gunn for working with them; she didn’t easily relent after he fired her, Wesley and Gunn; she told him he needed to set boundaries with Fred when she had a crush on Angel to prevent Fred from getting hurt; she held him accountable for getting Darla pregnant in season 3; she consistently encouraged him to fight for Connor no matter how hopeless or difficult it became and even in her brief return in season 5 she continued with this pattern. She straight up told Angel that he’d lost his way, lost sight of their mantra to help the helpless and had become entangled in the messiness of W&H. In doing so, she set Angel back on the right path. It’s strange because generally people view Angel as having more positive traits than Cordelia, but despite his good intentions, he was more prone to giving up and wallowing than Cordelia. Angel was more malleable, more willing to accept the bad in the world whilst Cordelia, on the other hand, persevered no matter what obstacles came her way and was firm in her morals. She knew what she believed to be good and she didn’t stray from that no matter what. That clear-cut attitude really helped Angel, who being a vampire and having seen so much evil, often become lost in the blurriness between good and evil, and became disheartened about fighting the good fight on numerous ocassions. Cordelia was truly Angel’s centre of gravity and moral compass - she was the one he relied on most in his redemptive journey and helping the helpless. That’s why throughout the series there was such a heavy emphasis on Angel needing Cordy (x) and why he proclaimed to be lost without her. Angel needing Cordelia was also demonstrative of a deeper emotional connection between them, which I’ll discuss later on.

Whilst Angel and Cordelia’s differences helped/changed Angel, they did the same for Cordy. Cordelia as a person was very focused on superficial gratification. She sought popularity and status, and she enjoyed money and material objects because of the pleasure they brought her. Her desire to become an actress reflects those desires she had. Although Cordelia demonstrated on BTVS that she was much more than the stereotypical popular-shallow girl she was portrayed to be (x), she wasn’t inclined to be considerate of others and empathy didn’t come naturally to her. In comparison, Angel spent a majority of his time thinking of others and had a wealth of empathy, for everybody regardless of whether they were those he loved or strangers; good or bad. There’s no doubt that the visions were a large part of what enabled Cordelia to be more empathetic since she was quite literally experiencing the traumas of others, but being close to Angel also impacted this. Until Cordelia became friends with Angel (and Doyle, Wes and Gunn), she’d never really been prioritised or cared for unconditionally. Angel’s kindness, consideration and support enabled Cordelia to open up emotionally in a way she never had before, not just to those closest to her, but to everybody. Ironically, a vampire (albeit a vampire with a soul) was the deepest insight Cordelia had gained into humanity. Angel devoted himself to helping others and Cordelia witnessed first-hand the positive impact that had on others and the rewards it brought. Whilst she fought against evil alongside the Scoobies on BTVS, it was being part of Angel Investigations that truly showed her the true meaning of fighting. It gave her purpose and belonging, which in turn allowed her to blossom in an entirely new way.

2. ‘Help the Helpless’: Finding purpose

Despite being different in many ways, Angel and Cordelia had one main thing in common - they were both seeking purpose, meaning and belonging in their lives at the start of ATS - and they found that with each other.

On BTVS Angel went through a traumatic ordeal with losing his soul, being killed by the woman he loved, being trapped in a hell dimension, coming back to life and then having to break up with Buffy. After Angel was cursed and his soul was restored, he retreated into the shadows and lived like a hermit for a century. He no longer belonged in the vampire or the human world, and he was so consumed with the guilt about his actions as Angelus that he was paralysed. He lived a lonely and purposeless existence - until the moment he saw Buffy. Buffy symbolised hope for Angel, because she was destined to fight evil and helping her provided him with a purpose for the first time in decades and I strongly believe that this (amongst other reasons) is why he fell in love with her. So when he split up with her and left for L.A. he lost his purpose along with Buffy. It’s clear that Angel’s time with Buffy and the Scoobies had been so significant to him that he couldn’t return to the life he had before he met Buffy, he needed to continue helping people, but he didn’t know how. Meeting Doyle immediately provided him with a sense of purpose by providing him with a connection to the HP, but as I already mentioned above, Cordelia really cemented that. Although Doyle knew he and Angel had a mission that they needed to work on together, he didn’t know how to make that a reality. Cordelia’s practicality, pragmatism and organisation is what took an idea - helping the helpless - and made it a reality - Angel Investigations. Like I said, Angel knew he wanted to help others but he didn’t really have a plan. When Angel Investigations was born, it became so much more than simply helping the odd person in distress after having stumbled upon them by chance. It became an indefinite commitment and mission which provided Angel with a true purpose - a purpose he realised was the singular most important thing to him in ‘Epiphany’ (2x16).

Cordelia was also in a similar place to Angel when she arrived in L.A. at the start of ATS. During her time on BTVS Cordelia’s character was built upon her status in high-school - she was pretty, rich and popular. Although she wasn’t afraid to stand up for what she believed in (such as defending Xander against her HS friends), she generally sought the approval of others. In HS Cordelia felt that she was somebody and that really came from her popularity and status. However, she admitted that that popularity came with a downside and that she was in fact, very lonely as a result of it (x). Cordelia’s experience in her relationship with Xander only fuelled that loneliness she felt because she isolated herself from her friends to be with him, and when he cheated on her, her ‘friendships’ with the rest of the Scoobies were revealed to be superficial in nature and quickly broke down. By the time she came to ATS, she had left high school and therefore was without her boyfriend (Xander), friends and the status that HS afforded her. This explains why she was on a mission to become a famous actress - to reclaim that status that she’d lost but on an even grander scale. The problem with this is that regardless of how shallow Cordy may have appeared, she clearly craved more than just popularity, fame or money. She’d already had that but it hadn’t fulfilled her. Enter Angel. Cordelia saw that Angel (and Doyle) needed guidance and that she could bring something important to the table. When she joined Angel and Doyle and set up Angel Investigations, she found her purpose just like Angel did. Initially, Cordelia’s desire to stick with Angel may have been because she didn’t have any other particularly appealing options, but it became so much more than that and by the end of season 1 Cordelia was wholly devoted to helping the helpless (x). In ‘Disharmony’ (2x17) she told Harmony that despite the popularity she had at HS, she was happier than she’d ever been because of the work she was doing, and having that sense of purpose came from meeting Angel. ‘Birthday’ (3x11) further reaffirmed this, when Cordelia chose being with Angel and helping the helpless over her dream of being a famous actress.

The creation of Angel Investigations (not just the business but also the family) wouldn’t have happened if Angel and Cordelia hadn’t of come together in the way they did. From the beginning, they were the heart of everything it was and when Angel lost Cordy in season 5, he admitted that he lost his way and was lost without her (again, this beckons back to Cordy being Angel’s centre of gravity). Poetically, Cordelia kissing Angel in ‘You’re Welcome’ (5x11) and passing on the vision to him quite literally set Angel (and co.) on the path to their final battle and brought purpose back into his life. But in addition to bringing purpose to each other’s lives through their shared mission of helping the helpless, they brought something else, perhaps more significant - belonging and family.

3. ‘We’re family’: Belonging and Family

Although Angel and Cordelia had bonds with others prior to ATS - Angel had relationships with Darla, Dru, Spike, Buffy; Cordelia with Harmony, Xander and the Scoobies - they never had with anyone else what they found with each other (and the rest of Angel Investigations) (x). In season 1 Cordelia referred to Angel as being her family and Angel reiterated that later in the series. The unconditional support, acceptance and care Angel and Cordelia had towards one other was unlike anything they’d had in any of their previous relationships (particularly for Cordelia).

Angel prioritised Cordelia, he devoted himself to keeping her safe (x) (x), he was always concerned for her well-being and he took the time to get to know her as a person. He didn’t like Cordy because of her status or popularity, he liked her for her and he expressed that numerous times - he told her he liked both versions of her (old and new), that she was an extraordinary woman and that he’d never known anybody like her (x) (x). Likewise, Cordelia accepted Angel - warts and all - without white washing his past or being ignorant to his darkness. She knew Angelus had done terrible things, and that Angel wasn’t immune from making mistakes and she held him accountable for that. But she also encouraged Angel to be open with her about that side of himself, telling him to drink blood in front of her and reassuring him that she and Doyle wouldn’t judge his vamp face (x). Cordelia came face to face with Angelus multiple times and she knew that even with a soul Angel had the capacity for darkness, but she still saw the good in him and believed it out-weighed the bad. She was never under any false illusions that Angel was perfect and that’s why she was firm in her promise that if needs be she would stake Angelus without hesitation.

It’s really that unconditional support and acceptance that led them to consider each other family. What’s most significant about this is that neither of them really had that before ATS. Angel (Liam) grew up in a volatile family situation with an abusive father and Cordelia’s family was so insignificant in her life that we only had a few references to them throughout the course of BTVS and ATS and not a single appearance from them. Neither of them really had a true home or family until they found each other. The friendship they found with each other (and the rest of Angel Investigations) truly was one of the most beautiful things that ever happened to either of them and provided them with a true home for the first time in their lives. In fact, in season 4 Angel explicitly said when Cordelia was missing “We’ll do whatever it takes to bring her home, where she belongs”, which perfectly sums up the title for this section about belonging and family. The bond they forged was one of the first they established with another that felt completely secure and contented (which is also why Cordelia reacted so negatively to him abandoning her, Wes and Gunn in season 2 over Darla), because at it’s core it was a friendship built upon familial love, which in my opinion, is the strongest and most enduring love there is.

4. ‘My Dearest Friend’: Friendship and Love

The most common argument I’ve seen against Angel and Cordelia as a romantic ship is, “They should’ve just stayed friends, they were better that way”. My issue with this is that Angel and Cordelia didn’t just fulfil one or the other - friendship or romance - they fulfilled both and so much more (x). What makes Angel and Cordelia’s relationship so special is that they morphed from acquaintances, to coworkers, to confidantes, to friends, to family, to lovers and were often some (or all) of these things to each other at once. Their feelings for each other cannot be boxed in, because they encompass so much, but there is no disputing that they loved each other.

Angel and Cordy had a profound connection spanning across the entirety of ATS, that no amount of words I type can quite express. They were a constant presence in each others’ lives for years, they were by each others’ sides through some of the most significant events of their lives and they shared it all - the highs and lows, the good and bad. Even when their romantic feelings came into fruition, their friendship remained unchanged. Nothing could change that fundamental dynamic between them or the ease with which they communicated and bounced off of one another. Any scene between Angel and Cordy has a natural chemistry (the nature of that chemistry is up to interpretation), and even when Angel was a awkward, bumbling and flustered fool, their interactions never felt strained or uncomfortable. This is because they knew each other so well and were so attuned to each other, but also because their relationship was already so well established by the time they realised they had romantic feelings for each other that there was no danger of those feelings complicating or endangering that friendship. It’s why in ‘Spin the Bottle’ (4x06) Angel told Cordelia that she was his dearest friend and he wanted that back. He was able to push aside his romantic feelings and desires because her friendship was more important to him than anything else.

Some may claim it’s weird for two people who referred to each other as family to be in love with each other, but when you’re in love with someone they are your family. The fact that Angel and Cordelia had that kind of connection provided them with the closeness, comfortableness, familiarity and security for those romantic feelings to blossom. Angel, in particular, had an aversion to romance because of The Curse and his experience with Buffy, but he felt so safe with Cordelia that it’s almost like he allowed himself to feel that way about him. Likewise, Cordelia was rather guarded in matters of the heart given her romantic history with Xander, but she felt so safe with Angel that she was able to finally open herself up in that way without even really realising she was. That profound connection between them can’t really be quantified, but can be seen in their actions.

5. ‘You’re not alone’: Emotional connection

When I say that it would do them a disservice to try and box Angel and Cordelia’s relationship into the platonic or romantic arena, that’s because of the emotional connection they shared which extends beyond such labels.

According to Wiki, ‘Emotional intimacy is a psychological event that happens when trust levels and communication between two people are such that it fosters the mutual sharing of one another's deepest selves.’ It involves trust, mutual trust, sense of community, understanding, open communication and sharing a duty. As you read this I’m sure you’re realising that Angel and Cordelia had all of this. They lived in close proximity day after day for years - they worked together, they fought together, they laughed together, they loved the same people (Doyle, Wes, Gunn, Fred, Connor), they grieved together (for Doyle and Connor), they shared the same beliefs and morals and they were united in the same mission to help the helpless. All of this led to them developing a profound emotional connection whereby they came to rely on each other and trust each other, and were able to open up to each other without fear of judgement or rejection (x). Throughout the series Angel and Cordy had multiple heart to hearts in which they confided in each other, encouraged or reassured each other and those talks became more regular as their connection grew. Something as simple as Angel calling Cordelia ‘Cordy’ (which he didn’t do until ATS ‘Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?’ 2x02) demonstrated that developing connection between them.

Again, it would be futile for me to list every example of when Angel and Cordelia had a scene that showed this emotional connection (particularly since you’ll have seen them all if you’ve watched the show), but off the top of my head some key examples would be - Cordelia helped Angel open up about Doyle’s death after Angel accidentally called Wesley Doyle; Cordelia helped Angel to open up about Buffy’s death after he’d spent 3 months trying to come to terms with it; when Cordelia fell ill from a vision Angel reassured her that her value to him wasn’t invested solely in her visions; generally Angel supported Cordelia repeatedly through the trauma of her visions; after Connor was born Angel developed an overly-protective paternal instinct and wouldn’t let anybody hold him, and Cordelia was the first he allowed to hold him; after Connor’s kidnapping Cordelia was able to simply sit with him in the silence and provide the emotional support no one else could and when Angel was insecure about bonding with Connor (after his return) she reassured him he was a capable and loving father.

Nothing showed the depth of that emotional connection more than the beginning of season 4 when Angel was at the bottom of the ocean. In order to hold on to his sanity, Angel repeatedly dreamt of Cordelia in various romantic scenarios and admitted to Wes and Gunn when he returned that the one thing that had kept him holding on was the thought of returning home to Cordelia. Cordy and his love for her was the tether to his humanity, his hope when everything was hopeless, his light in the dark.

I could continue exploring this because their emotional connection is demonstrated in nearly every scene they have together, but the point has been made that Angel and Cordelia consistently opened up to one another and were by each other’s sides through the hardest of times. Although they both had the rest of Angel Investigations (Wesley, Gunn, Fred and Lorne), they primarily turned to each other in their time or need or when they were feeling low. They instinctively knew what to do/say to ease each other’s insecurities, fears or anxieties and were each other’s source of emotional strength. What’s even more significant about this is that their connection was so profound, that even those around them noticed it.

6. ‘It’s the stars’: Everyone can see it

‘Everyone can see it’ is a popular romantic trope whereby a couple are perfect for each other but don’t realise their feelings for one another, but everyone else around them does. This was an integral part of Angel and Cordelia’s relationship since they found it very difficult, as friends, to make sense of their romantic feelings for each other and to acknowledge those feelings.

The first person to notice the chemistry between Angel and Cordelia was Fred in ‘Offspring’ (3x07). After seeing them sparring Fred spoke about kyrumption (two heroes meeting in battle and recognising their same fate) and moira (the gut physical attraction between two larger-than-life souls). Angel’s feelings for Cordelia had already been present long before then, but Fred’s observations provided him with an opportunity to acknowledge them for the first time and reflect on them.

Lorne being an empath naturally had an insight into Angel’s feelings and in ‘Waiting in the Wings’ (3x13) he revealed that he’d read Angel and knew he had feelings for Cordelia. Like Fred, he also spoke of kyrumption and told Angel that the way he was feeling for Cordelia was real. Lorne consistently was attuned to Angel’s feelings for Cordelia and understood that they’d grown beyond friendship. He also actively encouraged Angel to act on them because he believed Cordelia felt the same way about him and he shouldn’t miss the chance to see what they could be.

I watched ‘Waiting in the Wings’ with commentary from Whedon last week and in that he explained that the spell was a way for Angel and Cordelia to act on the feelings they had for each other (that they were only just starting to realise) in a way whereby they didn’t actually have to admit that they had those feelings and wanted to act on them (because they were afraid of the consequences). Fred and Lorne’s observations are very much the same - they’re a conduit through which Angel was able to internally explore his growing romantic feelings for Cordy and slowly come to the realisation that he was in love with her.

7. ‘Were we in love?’: Romantic love

Although I’ve been primarily focused on the general connection between Angel and Cordelia and what they brought to each other’s lives, there was definitely romantic love and attraction between the two of them and it’s important to discuss that.

I think when people compare Angel and Cordy’s relationship to Angel’s relationship with Buffy people feel Angel’s love for Cordelia wasn’t romantic or passionate, but it was, it’s just that the love he had for Cordy and their relationship was so fundamentally different from his relationship with Buffy that the two can’t really be compared. Buffy was Angel’s epic, great love - it consumed him from the inside out, it was intense, passionate and devastating - but Cordy was something entirely different. She wasn’t supposed to be some big epic love, she was supposed to be a friend with whom he developed a strong bond with and slowly came to fall in love with over time. Their love wasn’t characterised by angst-ridden scenes, grand speeches of forbidden love and sexual tension - it was grounded in family, friendship and emotional connection (as I’ve explored above). Their feelings for each other weren’t sudden and didn’t start out big (they truly were just acquaintances at the start of ATS season 1), but as they spent time together, shared experiences and got to know each other, their romantic feelings quietly grew in the background until neither of them could ignore it anymore.

It’s frustrating that we never got a clear admission of love between the two (all of their love confessions were to other people or cut off before they finished), but there is no doubt in my mind that Angel and Cordelia were in love. Their actions proved that and from a personal perspective, I could feel the love between them. Everyone will have different interpretations of when they believe the pair fell in love, but interestingly, I don’t think there’s supposed to be ‘one moment’ that they fell in love, because the whole point of their relationship is that it was never that clear cut. They didn’t go to bed one night as best friends and wake up the next day a think, “I’m in love with Angel/Cordelia!”. It was a subtle evolution of feelings over time, which neither of them truly noticed until it was brought to their attention by others, because they were so used to being friends and navigating within the realms of that, that they didn’t consider the possibility that their feelings could have gone beyond that.

Since ATS was primarily focused on Angel’s POV, it’s very easy to follow Angel’s evolving feelings for Cordelia and attempt to pin-point the moment at which his romantic feelings came to fruition. Like I said, I don’t think there was one particular moment where Angel realised his feelings for Cordelia, but in my opinion, they had definitley developed by ‘Dead End’ (2x18). At the beginning of season 2, Angel had a crisis due to Darla’s return and he fired Cordelia, Wesley and Gunn. It was really the darkest we saw Angel get in ATS whilst he had his soul, he truly lost his way for a while and Cordelia was so hurt and angry by his actions that she couldn’t forgive him. When Angel finally realised he’d made a mistake cutting his friends out of his life, he did everything he could to make amends, but he seemed most affected by the loss of Cordelia’s friendship and he was determined to earn her forgiveness. What’s interesting about this is that at this point one could argue that Angel’s friendship with Cordelia wasn’t that profound and it didn’t particularly matter if they made up, because they still could’ve worked together as co-workers (although it might’ve been a little awkward and uncomfortable). But Angel was adamant that he wanted her friendship back and almost the entirety of ‘Epiphany’ (2x16) was focused on Angel’s desire to make amends with Cordy and his devastation when she refused to accept him back. This continued in ‘Disharmony’ (2x17), with him desperately fighting to earn her forgiveness and ending with him winning Cordelia over by buying her clothes, which he was visibly happy about (x). Angel’s reaction at the prospect of losing Cordelia beckons back to ‘To Shanshu to L.A.’ (1x22) when we witnessed for the first time how scared he was to lose her and also suggests that at this point in season 2 his romantic feelings were developing for her. In the following episode ‘Dead End’ (2x18), he was so focused on making Cordelia feel better (and this was likely a continuation of him making it up to her) that he brought her food and his reaction to her saying she loved him was perhaps the brightest smile I’ve ever seen on Angel’s face (x). In ‘Belonging’ (2x19), Angel’s attraction to Cordelia was made clear when he saw her in a bikini and he also expressed anger at the director of the commercial she was filming for treating her like a ‘commodity’ and a ‘slave’, forcing him to apologise to Cordelia for the way he spoke to her and telling Cordelia he would rip his head off if she wanted him to. When Cordelia was sucked into the portal to Pylea in ‘Over the Rainbow’ (2x20), Angel’s profound emotional connection to Cordelia was clear (x) - he just wanted her back, he didn’t care how or what they had to do and he expressed that he couldn’t lose Cordy again after just getting her back (also that one line, ‘It’s Cordy’, that Angel says to Wesley when he tells Angel it’s too dangerous to go through the portal and they may never get back holds so much emotion). When Cordelia admitted to loving Groo in Pylea, Angel mistakenly thought she was saying it to him and was disappointed to learn otherwise. So basically, by the end of season 2 Angel undoubtedly had romantic feelings for Cordelia, but wasn’t yet aware of them. Season 3 continued to build on that by allowing Angel to heal following Buffy’s death and reach a resolution in ‘Heartthrob’ (3x01) whereby he could start to process his feelings for Cordy, putting him a situation where he was faced with the prospect of losing her again, therefore cementing the depth of his feelings for her (‘That Vision Thing’ 3x02) and having Fred share her observations about his feelings for her, finally allowing him to fully acknowledge them for the first time.

From Cordelia’s POV it’s much harder to guess when her romantic feelings for Angel developed, because we didn’t get as much insight into her. I do think her feelings for him didn’t come as soon as Angel’s did for her and neither did the realisation that she felt that way. ‘That Vision Thing’ (3x02) hints that Cordelia’s feelings for Angel may have begun to grow beyond friendship when she said, “If I lose the visions I wouldn't be able to help you anymore. You wouldn't need me.” Notice, Cordelia was concerned with Angel needing her, not the rest of the team. Also, since Angel was so devoted to saving Cordelia and explicitly told her she was more important to him than his vendetta against W&H, we can assume this impacted Cordelia’s feelings towards him since this was perhaps the first time she noticed how committed he was to keeping her safe and how much he wanted her in his life. I also think that witnessing Angel go through the process of becoming a father significantly impacted Cordy’s feelings for Angel. Seeing him take on the role of a father showed an even softer, nurturing side of him and the bond Cordy developed with Connor also brought them closer together. However, ‘Birthday’ (3x11) is the first episode that properly affirms the depth of Cordelia’s feelings for Angel. She was given everything she ever wanted - fame, money, stardom - and she gave it all up to return to Angel. Despite having no memory, upon seeing Angel so broken, Cordelia instinctively leaned in and kissed him fulfilling the old fairy-tale trope of true love’s kiss breaking the spell. I think from Cordelia’s POV, she was much more closed off to allowing herself to acknowledge her romantic feelings for Angel because she didn’t even consider Angel a romantic option given The Curse. This also explains why upon Groo’s return in season 3, she resumed her relationship with him despite having clearly developed profound romantic feelings for Angel that led her to prioritise him above Groo repeatedly to the point that Groo himself noticed that she had feelings for Angel.

This brings me back to the main point about Angel and Cordelia’s romantic feelings for each other never being straightforward or easily defined. In ‘Waiting in the Wings’ (3x13) it was clear - spell or no spell - that Angel and Cordelia shared a mutual sexual attraction and that Angel’s canonically confirmed romantic feelings for Cordelia were reciprocated. Yet Cordelia didn’t confirm her feelings for him explicitly to the audience until 9 episodes later in the finale of the season. This is for a number of reasons, but primarily because it was easier to continue denying their feelings and remain friends than face the complications that a romance posed. Even if they had been given the chance to openly express their feelings for each other, what would’ve happened next? As Angel said to Lorne in ‘Waiting in the Wings’, what could he offer her (as a cursed vampire)? It would’ve been too complicated and they knew that.

That criss-cross and complexity of their love is part of the reason I love them so much, because it’s authentic and relatable. Particularly in the case of friends who have fallen in love - it’s no easy transition and it’s definitely not easy to make sense of your feelings Plus, Angel and Cordy had the added complications that went with their life (Angel being a vampire, The Curse, Darla, their friends, Angel Investigations, W&H and the supernatural world generally, to name a few). In an interview a long time ago SMG said that the most heartbreaking thing about Buffy and Angel was that it was unfulfilled love, and in this respect so are Angel and Cordelia. It’s heartbreaking because they truly loved one another but they were never even given the opportunity to see what they could potentially be. They missed their chance and because of that they were always left wondering ‘what if?’

8. ‘I’ll be seeing you’: Missed Opportunity

The fact that Angel and Cordy never got their shot to be together (which they discussed in ‘You’re Welcome’ 5x11) is the tragedy of their love. However, it wouldn’t be the same love story if it didn’t have that unresolved element to it. Everybody longs for closure and resolution with their ships, but the truth is, in real life few people truly get that, they simply have to move on and live with their regrets. But whilst I love Angel and Cordelia’s relationship and story as it is, there’s no escaping the fact that they were done dirty in seasons 4 and 5 in regards to the writing and as a result their story did go in a...shall we say unfavourable direction?

Everyone that’s ever watched ATS has problems with season 4 (I could write a separate post about the problems with season 4, particularly in regards to Cordelia’s character), and when it comes to Angel and Cordelia’s relationship, there’s a lot that was handled badly which unfortunately, derailed the beautiful development that took place between them in season 3. We still had a lot of key moments that played out between Angel and Cordelia in season 4, but the main problem with the season is that we don’t actually know when Cordelia was actually Cordelia. At what point was she herself, if she ever was? Did she really have amnesia? If so, can we count amnesia!Cordy as still being Cordy to an extent? When did Jasmine start to take over? Did she have any agency at all when she was possessed by Jasmine, even if it was only the briefest of moments? All of these questions remain unanswered and make it very difficult to fully assess the Angel/Cordelia relationship during season 4, but I’m going to try to anyway.

What remained clear throughout season 4 was that Angel loved Cordy. In fact, despite Cordelia technically being absent for the majority of the season, it was very Cangel-heavy, perhaps more than the seasons before it. Angel had multiple dreams/fantasies about Cordelia, devoted himself to finding her when she was missing at the start of the season, was visibly distraught to have her lose her memories and strike up a relationship with Connor, and lost his soul from a fantasy of making love to her. In my opinion, this is the season that really affirmed that Angel was in love with Cordy beyond any doubt. When Angel asked Cordelia if they were in love and she replied, “We were”, I strongly believe that was Cordelia. She’d just gotten her memories back so Jasmine hadn’t had chance to worm her way to the forefront yet, and I believe in that moment that was Cordelia finally breaking through and telling Angel that she loved him. Although the circumstances are ambiguous to say the least, I believe this to be the first admission of love exchanged between the two whereby the words were said plainly (because obviously they said ‘I love you’ to each other repeatedly before this moment in other ways). However, this doesn’t undo the dirty that was done to Angel and Cordelia in this season. Despite the fact that we know Cordelia wasn’t responsible for any of her actions since she was possessed by Jasmine, it’s still very hard when watching her with Connor to separate Jasmine from Cordelia. And from Angel’s perspective, he literally watched the woman he loved have sex with his son. Finding out afterwards that it wasn’t actually Cordelia doesn’t reduce the devastating impact of witnessing that and the way the Cordelia!Jasmine arc was written did taint some aspects of their relationship by forcing Angel to have to witness ‘Cordelia’ enter into a romantic relationship with Connor and have a child with him. Also, it was utterly ridiculous and unbelievable that Angel and co. wouldn’t recognise that Cordy wasn’t herself. This is definitely a writing issue, because the whole possession thing was handled so badly in the respect that Cordelia seemed like herself (even her sleeping with Connor was believable due to her amnesiac state), but it was still not in-keeping with the show that none of her friends (and especially Angel) would notice that Cordelia was possessed. Overall, season 4 did a huge disservice to Angel and Cordelia’s romance (although the biggest disservice was definitely done to Cordelia’s character) and whilst their relationship was beautifully developed in seasons 1-3, season 4 stopped that development in its tracks.

Season 5 continued to do a disservice to Cordelia (and Angel and Cordelia) by practically erasing Cordy from existence (I know that backstage issues with the cast need to be taken into consideration here, but the lack of consideration to Cordelia’s character is still a valid point to discuss). Despite how utterly terrified Angel was whenever faced with the prospect of losing Cordelia, in season 5 he was visibly fine about Cordelia being in a coma and wasn’t even attempting to pull her out of it. The fact that Angel (and co.) would simply stand by and go on with the rest of their lives without devoting every single second to waking Cordy is ridiculous and completely OOC for all of them. Angel, Wes, Gunn, Fred, Lorne and Cordy were deeply connected and would have done anything for each other, and there’s no way they would’ve given up on Cordy like that. But back to the point, despite Angel being in love with Cordelia throughout season 4, there was no reference to his feelings for her until ‘You’re Welcome’ (5x11). Now, don’t get me wrong, I love that episode and I always will, but I also can’t help but notice how out of place that episode feels within the rest of the season. In the episodes leading up to it Cordelia was barely mentioned and in the episodes afterwards, her death was completely ignored with only a few passing references from Angel near the end of the season (don’t even get me started on the fact that she didn’t even get a funeral. What the hell was that all about?!?!? This is Cordy.) Furthermore, Angel reverted back to being actively in love with Buffy (particularly in ‘The Girl in Question’ 5x20, which is honestly such a bad episode, I can’t even) with no consideration given to the fact that he had feelings for Cordelia. Personally, I believe all of these consistencies come from fan pandering - the reaction to Angel and Cordelia becoming a couple was very negative so they reverted back to the Angel/Buffy relationship because it was so popular and well-loved. But back to, ‘You’re Welcome’, the episode definitely redeemed some of what was done to Cordelia (and her relationship with Angel) by giving her/them a satisfying ending after an horrendous season 4, but nothing can truly make up for the fact that Angel and Cordelia’s relationship was so abruptly ended in the manner it was. It also can’t make up for the fact that we missed out on two entire seasons worth of development that we would’ve potentially got if the Jasmine plot hadn’t taken place (again, I understand this was largely down to behind-the-scenes complications with Charisma and Whedon).

These flaws in the writing (and execution of the relationship) in seasons 4 and 5 is far and above my biggest criticism of Angel and Cordelia’s relationship as a whole (although it’s a criticism of the writers more so than Cordelia and Angel or David and Charisma). It never would have made sense for Angel and Cordy to have a plain sailing fairy-tale romance, but they had so much more potential and could have grown to become something even more beautiful if season 4 had continued to build upon their development from seasons 1-3. ‘You’re Welcome’ perfectly demonstrates the potential they had and what they could’ve become if Cordelia hadn’t been possessed by Jasmine. And that was only a taster and we could’ve had, we could’ve so much more. In my opinion, there were no limits on where their relationship could have been taken since it was so well written, built-up and established leading up to season 4. The fact that we’ll never know how the relationship would’ve played out if it had continued is sad, but as I said, that missed chance that they had is key to Angel and Cordelia’s relationship. It’s the one that got away, the love that could never be and that one person whom we always wonder, “What if?” about.

9. ‘There are no people like us’: Why Angel/Cordelia are misunderstood and live in Buffy/Angel’s shadow

The final section I wanted to do is an exploration of the reasons why I feel Cordelia and Angel are misunderstood as a ship and how I believe this primarily stems from the fact that they live in Buffy/Angel’s shadow. This is where I’ll be comparing Angel/Cordelia and Buffy/Angel, so if you’re a fan of Buffy/Angel, you may not want to read this final section. However, this isn’t anti-Buffy/Angel, it’s really me working through my own thoughts and feelings as both a Buffy/Angel and a Angel/Cordelia shipper (yes, we exist haha).

People have a tendency to make comparisons between the Angel/Cordelia and Buffy/Angel relationship two relationships, when in reality (as I’ve mentioned above) the two aren’t really comparable. Angel’s relationships with Buffy and Cordelia were distinctive, took place under completely different circumstances and brought different things to his life. Angel was fully engaged in a romantic relationship with Buffy for 2 years (on and off), but he never had the opportunity to do that with Cordelia. The romantic feelings were there, as was the potential for them to act on that and see what they could be, but it didn’t happen. So to compare the two relationships (when technically Angel and Cordy never entered into a romantic relationship) is futile to say the least. However, people naturally make those comparisons and when they do they seem to come up with two key reasons Angel/Cordelia are inferior to Buffy/Angel:

1. Sexual relationship/chemistry - It hasn’t escaped my attention that Buffy and Angel have a lot more sexual chemistry than Angel and Cordelia. Honestly, in my opinion, nothing can really compare to SMG/David chemistry, it’s so damn good. However, this criticism simply fails to understand that Angel and Cordelia’s love/connection never was primarily one of a sexual nature (notice that every fantasy Angel ever had of Cordelia was romantic not sexual). Romance was definitely part of their relationship (particularly in seasons 3, 4 and 5) and they had an attraction and they had chemistry (’Waiting in the Wings’ damn well proved that), but their relationship was never about sex. In comparison to Angel and Buffy, their relationship was deeply rooted in attraction. From the moment they meet each other they’re very physically attracted to each other and in seasons 1 and 2 they both make references made to how badly they want to kiss each other whenever they’re together, whilst in season 3 they discuss the difficulties they find in fighting against their sexual attraction to each other. As a result, Angel and Buffy’s relationship was always heavily steeped in sexual tension. The fact that Angel and Cordelia’s relationship didn’t have the same level of sexual attraction doesn’t make that relationship any less important, just different (which I know I keep saying, but it’s kind of my whole argument here - the two relationships are so fundamentally different you can’t compare them).

2. Buffy is Angel’s one and only true love - There’s no denying that Buffy was and always will be Angel’s great love, but to quote one of my not-so-favourite shows (The Vampire Diaries), contrary to popular belief, people can (and usually do) have more than one great love in their lives. Clinging too tightly to the Buffy/Angel relationship ignores the immense changes Angel undergoes on ATS and the fact he moved on from Buffy (up until Spike’s return in season 5, which reverts him back to being kind of obsessed with Buffy, which is such bad writing and so inconsistent that it annoys me. And this isn’t including crossovers either, because damn, they’re so problematic/inconsistent and I didn’t even realised until I watched ATS, but I can see now why the writers didn’t want to do too many crossovers despite the fans wanting them). Buffy was always in Angel’s heart and he always carried her with him, but he didn’t actively pine over her or yearn for her when he moved to L.A. (he did more so in season 1 and particularly after the events of ‘I Will Remember You’, but he slowly moved on). Angel conclusively and healthily moved on from Buffy - he established a life for himself which he loved and made him happy, he found a home, friends and embarked on a new love with Cordy. When two people have shared a love like Angel did with Buffy, it never goes away but it does change and it almost grows dormant (for reference, there’s a brilliant meta that discusses Angel moving on from Buffy which you can read here). To use a real life example here, my mom (who’s now 50) has been in around 5 serious long-term relationships in her life and has been with her current partner for 5 years and is completely in love with him. However, she’s openly admitted to me that she loved my dad more than she’s ever loved any man and she still regards him the love of her life. That doesn’t mean she’s still in love with him, because she’s not. She hasn’t seen him in two decades, she’s moved on and she’s found love with someone new. That love she had with him is a memory in her head and her heart, but it has no place in her life now. She’s a different person, her life has changed dramatically and that love is in the past. If he rocked up now he’d be a stranger to her and regardless of those memories she has of him, he’s no longer the person she’s in love with. That’s exactly what happened with Buffy and Angel. They always loved each other, but Angel truly did move forward (whether Buffy moved on is something I’m less unsure of). In ‘Heartthrob’ (3x01) Angel told James that he’d lost the woman he loved (Buffy) and that he had loved her with his whole heart. In response, James said that that couldn’t be true because if it was, when she had died Angel would’ve died along with her. After that, in a scene with Cordy (x), Angel admitted that he was okay and had dealt with Buffy’s death and how he felt guilty about that. In my opinion, this episode (and those scenes in particular) confirmed that Angel had moved on from Buffy and had gotten to a place where he could finally open himself up to Cordelia wholeheartedly. In fact, David spoke about how Angel had moved on from Buffy and that Cordy was what he needed (he also mentioned Darla, which is a topic I won’t get into because I could write an entirely separate post about that too) and here’s what he said:

Interviewer: Darla killed herself, right? The baby's mother? Who's gonna step up and help Angel raise the baby? Buffy?

David: God, no. Buffy's pretty much out of the picture. They've played their storyline and that's just the past. I think between Cordelia and Fred he'll be mommied to death. But, Buffy's just the past.

Interviewer: Oh, come on. Buffy can never really be just the past, can she? I mean, that's Angel's soulmate.

David: I think Darla was probably his soulmate. I mean, they spent a hundred years together, then made a baby. You can't just--

Interviewer: Well, then Buffy was his first love.

David: Angel was Buffy's first love, but Angel loved Darla in a sick way.

Interviewer: I'm a Buffy/Angel fan. Sorry.

David: You're forgiven. No, I'm just saying that the two shows are on different networks and it's not gonna happen. There's no more story there for those two. Buffy isn't Angel's priority anymore. In season one and two of our show, she was always in the back of his mind, well, now it's all about the baby and Buffy is just, well, she's just a person he used to know.

Interviewer : Awww, come on! The story there was so incredible.

David: And like every good story, it came to an end. And then started over. On. Different. Networks. (again with the emphasis)

Interviewer : Is Angel going to hook up with Cordy?

David: Well, I'm all for it. I don't know what the writers have planned in that regard, but I'm a fan of Charisma's work and I'd love for our characters to be romantically involved. Cordy is really what Angel needs, I believe. (x)

See, it’s important to acknowledge that as amazing as Buffy and Angel’s story was, they broke up and went their separate ways. As David rightfully pointed out, it was the past and Buffy was no longer his priority. It’s always frustrated me that Angel was expected not to move on and to pine for Buffy, whilst Buffy was allowed to move on and find love again. The argument is that Angel was so much older than Buffy that he couldn’t or rather shouldn’t want to find love, whilst Buffy was still young, but the problem is, although Angel was technically old, he was still a teenager himself in terms of his experiences in love. He didn’t have a soul for 100 years so was incapable of love and then he spent 100 years when he had a soul cut off from the world. He had barely experienced anything the world had to offer and he certainly hadn’t had the opportunity to forge connections with others or explore the world of love. Buffy was able to move on from Angel and experience different types of relationships/loves with Parker (urgh), Riley and Spike (amongst others who she flirted with or briefly dated post-BTVS season 3). Angel deserved the same opportunity to experience new types of relationships that were different than the one he had with Buffy. I’m going to use another quote The Vampire Diaries because I feel it sums this up perfectly, “I realised that I may not be able to explain what I feel for her, but it is something, and, yeah, maybe all love isn't true love in the messed up way that you and I have experienced it, but I think this could turn into something even better.” This right here is exactly how I perceive Angel’s feelings for Buffy and Cordelia to be. Angel had only ever loved one person, Buffy was all he’d ever known of love and it was so big, messy and all-consuming , but with Cordelia he realised that love didn’t necessarily have to be like that and that there are different types of love.

There’s no disputing that Angel never loved Cordelia in the same way he loved Buffy (which this post explains perfectly) - Angel will never love anyone the way he loved Buffy, but he did fall in love with Cordelia and she enriched his life in new ways and filled a void in him in much the same way Buffy did. During ATS Cordelia surpassed Buffy in importance simply because of the place she had in Angel’s life - she was the center of his world and without her it wouldn’t be the same (we saw that in season 5). It would be unfair to claim Angel couldn’t or shouldn’t love someone else just because he had such an intense love with Buffy. What makes his relationship with Cordelia so special is that it was so different than the love he had with Buffy. Those two loves will always sit in contrast to each other, but will never overshadow or replace one another because they’re both significant and special for different reasons.

The point of talking about this was really just to highlight that Angel and Cordelia’s relationship is not by any means invalid or inferior because of Buffy/Angel. Both relationships are important and exist in contrast to each other. Angel and Cordelia’s relationship does tend to be misunderstood and/or unappreciated due to the nature of the writing (which had a lot of problems in seasons 4 and 5, and even a little in season 3) and because they’re too heavily compared to the hot and heavy romance between Angel and Buffy. However, Angel and Cordelia’s relationship developed organically over time in a subtle way and is demonstrative of how much relationships can evolve as life progresses and circumstances change, and how two people can grow together. Theirs was a story about two people, who in the beginning were indifferent to each other, but grew to know each other profoundly and found a lot through being in each others lives - purpose, belonging, family, friendship and love - and through having and sharing that, they fell in love. It’s not a conventional romantic love as most of us would expect, and they didn’t have the chances to fully explore their romantic connection because their story ended prematurely, but it was a beautiful relationship embedded in human connection and friendship at the deepest and purest level.

If you got to the end of this, thank you so much for reading. This took me days and days to write and edit, so I’m really grateful to you for reading and would appreciate likes/reblogs if you found this interesting. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this topic, so if you have any feel free to stop by my ask box :)

#angel the series #ats #cangel #angel x cordelia #ats meta #angel the series meta #cangel meta #mine #my meta #i can't even explain how long this took to write #i just hope that at least one person reads it now lmao #i spent so long on my last meta about the punisher and that has no notes #i guess even if no one reads it i get the enjoyment out of writing it and that's what counts

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pellicano-sanguino · 5 years

Text

Wasted potential in fiction is worse than a story that’s just bad overall.

If someone had asked me couple years ago what vampire books I liked the most, one I would have definitely brought up was Vampire Winter by Lois Tilton.

It’s a post-nuclear story, where a vampire is at first joyful that the fallout clouds cover the sun both day and night so he is free to hunt whenever he wants but things get worse rather soon. Turns out humans who have been exposed to the radiation have turned undrinkable, poisonous for even vampires. Also, the amount of survivors is small and getting lesser by the day as desperate people leave their shelters to find food and supplies and run from looters, risking radiation poisoning. The vampire who used to kill his victims without mercy is at a situation where he can’t afford to lose a single healthy human to avoid starvation. So he strikes a symbiotic deal with a bunch of humans: since he is unaffected by radiation, he will wander out and bring them food, medicine, even books to pass their time, in exchange for blood donations. This is what I remembered from the book, and thought it good, because I’m a sucker for interesting relationship dynamics between a vampire and their donors.

However, I re-read the book recently and was surprised. It wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered it. The interesting symbiotic relationship between the vampire and his donors only lasts a short period of the book and then they go their separate ways and the vampire for some weird reason just goes back to killing his victims again. Also, there was a lot of completely unnecessary violence towards women. The book tries to have a message of “in hard times it’s better to spare lives and co-operate than divide into groups all against each other” and that “every life is precious” but then goes and has the donors leave behind a mentally handicapped girl for the vampire to kill because she would just be “a burden” for the survivors. Also, there’s a fucking gang rape scene. I’m... confused... how did I ever convince myself this was a good book?!

The problem was that my memories were too focused on the one part of the book I found super fascinating. The vampire-donor symbiosis plot was such a great story idea that I actually forgot the rest of the book is shit. I was too intrigued by the story’s potential I failed to notice it doesn’t properly utilize the great idea it had and just turns into a gross masculine violence fantasy.

It’s a shame, because with little changes, this could have been an awesome book. But it completely wasted its potential and left me much more disappointed than would have been the case if it were just a regular old shitty vampire novel with nothing new and interesting added.

I just finished a new book that has the same problem and it infuriates me. It’s a book that has some really great parts but then goes and ruins everything. This book is called Pure Mua (”Bite Me”) by Terhi Tarkiainen. I know, writing about a Finnish book in Tumblr might be useless, since what are the chances Finnish vampire enthusiasts will find my posts, but I want to vent my frustration about it somewhere. So here goes.

Finnish vampire fiction is a rare species. There are some short stories but the only novel I can think of is Jarkko Laine’s Vampyyri, which is a very... specific Finnish literature category; a “tuskapaskakirja” (literally, pain-shit-book) where everyone is miserable and things just get more and more depressing until the whole garbage reaches a lame anticlimax like a bowl of ice cream I accidentally put in the refrigerator instead of in the freezer. Not my kind of book. So, when I heard the rare species had spawned a new book, Pure Mua, I got curious.

My expectations about the book were mixed. I generally don’t like modern Finnish literature. The few books of it that I had to read back in high school or by getting them as gifts were at best incredibly boring and at worst insufferable pretentious artsy junk. However, this book looked like it aimed to be entertaining, not fake deep and for intellectuals only. It whispered a promise of genuinely embracing its own cheesiness. And, well, I do like cheese.

So I read the book. And my opinions remain conflicting with one another. I can’t really say if I liked it or not because for every part that was done well there was something that seriously rubbed me the wrong way.

The story itself is really well written. The text flows naturally and is pleasant to read, the narration is occasionally very witty and humorous. The plot twists are unpredictable which is unfortunately rare in this genre. Vampire fiction is so full of reused story ideas that they often turn out rather predictable. But this book surprised me several times. Of course, unpredictability shouldn’t be valued by itself. Writers who intentionally lead the reader in one direction only to pull a carpet under their feet or who make their characters behave in unreasonable and inconsistent manner just to get a juicy plot twist, usually don’t produce good quality stories. These plot twists however feel natural and well planned, not there just for the shock value. The plot also escalates constantly, forcing you to read chapter after chapter because you don’t want to leave it at an intense cliffhanger.

Since the vampire fiction is full of reused story ideas, it’s rare that I come across a book that has something I haven’t seen before. The basic premise of this book is that since vampires aren’t classified as humans, human rights don’t apply to them and there’s a ring of illegal slave trade where a “kennel” produces “specimens” for the rich assholes who want to turn their fantasies of dating a hot vampire into reality. Human trafficking basicly, only with vampires. I have not bumped into this story idea before. Usually the power dynamics are reversed, the vampires being the cruel monsters who do horrible things to humans. I know the whole “humans are the real monsters”-trope is old and overused, but surprisingly rarely does it happen in vampire fiction. I guess it’s because to a lot of friends of this genre vampires are a power fantasy and they wouldn’t enjoy seeing them tamed and subjected to something as horrifying as human trafficking.

So, the book turns the traditional vampire/human power dynamics upside down. However, the protagonist actually doesn’t want the pet vampire her nutty parents bought her as a birthday present. She tries to find a way to safely release him back “into the wild” but has trouble coming up with a solution on how to do it and ensure he won’t be recaptured by the trafficking ring again (since he is chipped).

Next I’m going to spoil the last plot twist of the book. Turns out the trafficking ring is led not by humans but by a loony communist vampire who has a diabolical plan. He intentionally made vampire pets a trend among the filthy rich and then once every elite household in Finland has one, he intends to shut down the safety chips that give the vampires electric shocks if they attack their masters and let the hungry, abused, vengeful vampire slaves drink all the greedy capitalist pigs.

And this is... supposed to be the main villain of the book. I’m supposed to be appalled and horrified by this impending slaughter of innocent humans. Well. Does it make me a monster if I say I think this is a great plan? Everyone who buys a personal sex toy from a human trafficking ring deserves to be devoured by ravenous vampires. The fact that the victims of slavery aren’t technically human here changes nothing since their intelligence is identical to ours. And creeps who would buy a vampire would definitely buy a woman or a little girl too.

Everyone who thinks slavery is a fun hobby that the elite should be allowed to do again deserves to be killed by their slave.

The slavery theme is one of the reasons I have such conflicting opinions about this book. It’s such a horrifying scenario and you really, really want to see the main vampire freed from it, you want to see him and the main character succeed in their attempt to destroy the vampire slave trade. But then the book decides to focus less on the horrors of slavery and... actually romanticize prostitution. The vampires in this book’s universe are all nymphomaniacs and addicted to sex. Umm... ok, your world, you do what you want. But I really can’t stand the stereotype of seductive, nymphomaniac prostitutes, who do it because they enjoy their “work”, considering how the harsh reality of prostitution is something completely different. “She likes it anyway” is a lie slimy old men tell one another to feel less guilty when they go to Thailand to “play minigolf.” Hurk. Hork. Barf. I know this is fiction and the vampires aren’t human (and we don’t see female vampires) but I really wish people would stop writing this character type. Also, I hate stories where a noble person saves a prostitute and is “rewarded” by their love (in other words, gets to fuck the prostitute anyway, feeding into the idea that “nice guys” who protect women from creeps deserve sex as a reward.)

I give the book one point for the scene where the protagonist starts to caress her slave when she’s super drunk but then is startled and horrified at what she did, thinking that she has become a monster.

If there’s one thing I hate even more than romanticizing prostitution, it’s sexual violence. Thank goodness this story doesn’t have that but it’s bad enough that one male vampire constantly threatens the protagonist with rape. And I’m supposed to care about this guy and worry about what will happen to him. There’s something so disgustingly... male... in the thought process that when you want to hurt someone, your first thought is rape. When a woman sees a person they love being abused by someone, she might beat the abuser into a fine pulp but no, women do not rape, women do not use sex as a torture devise. If a guy gets hard from anger and wants to fuck someone he hates there is something seriously wrong with him and he needs to seek help. Men are scum!

This book isn’t a particularly pleasant read for a feminist anyway. With the exception of the protagonist, all female characters are lazily written, unconvincing, misogynistic cardboard cutouts. Male characters on the other hand are, with the exception of the main villain, painted as flawed but sympathetic. The protagonist has a stalker ex who doesn’t understand the concept of “no.” I was convinced this creep would turn out to be a villain in the end, trying to kill the protagonist because “if I can’t have you, no one else can!” Because everything he said and did kept raising the red flags. But no, I’m supposed to find him charming and loveable and his stupid bratboy jokes soooo hilarious. The book wants me to think of all the women except protagonist as either mean-spirited bitches or dumb blondes (your “I’m not like other girls”-complex is showing...) and feel sympathy towards a creepy stalker and a guy who threatens women with rape. Right. Is this some het culture bullshit or just what exactly am I not getting? Also, if your only way to make the heroine likeable is to turn all the other women into cartoonishly evil or ridiculously immature and stupid so that she'll look better in comparison, the reader will become suspicious of her character (because exaggerating the faults in others while claiming you yourself are perfectly innocent is a strategy used by narcisstic, manipulative jerkfaces).

I’m also rather disappointed that the book relies on stereotyping Fenno-Swedes. Fenno-Swedes are the Swedish speaking minority, descendants from rich Swedes that were given land here back when Finland was part of Sweden. Because many of them are still in the upper class, having inherited their ancestors land and wealth, the middle and lower class Finnish speaking Finns tend to be racist towards them, considering them smug elitists and disgustingly rich capitalists who never had to work for their wealth. Making the main character a Fenno-Swede and then giving her behavior that strengthens the prejudice against “bättre folk” is just really lazy writing, it’s like having a romani character and having her do shoplifting. Sure, the protagonist wants to be different than her gross parents who would buy a sex slave as a gift, but her attitude towards money is the same indifference. Oh, I smashed my phone to pieces because the phone call made me angry. Oh well. Pappa betalar.

There’s a scene where the protagonist and the stalker ex witness a protest that consists simultaneously of racists who want to close the borders and unemployed who blame the government for their poverty (right. You really want to draw “equals as” sign between crazy nationalist bigots and unfortunate people trapped in unemployment hell? Fuck you, fuck you so much.). The protagonist asks where all this hatred comes from and the stalker ex explains that when a person is in a bad situation in life they seek scapegoats to blame for their troubles, whether that be foreigners or politicians. But since we’ve already gone the route of giving the protagonist stereotypical Fenno-Swede behaviour, why not let her voice the opinion of “If the lower class is angry at the upper class it’s because they project unfair blame onto the rich, surely their suffering has nothing to do with the elite’s greed and misuse of power.” Now, opinions like this wouldn’t matter to me normally, because characters are allowed to be flawed, but when those flaws rely on harmful stereotypes, it’s disappointing.

I want to like this book. It’s so genuine and entertaining and well written. But I threw up in my mouth so frequently while reading it that I don’t think I care to read it another time. If it was written a little differently, I would probably love this book. But there’s no use crying after wasted potential. I can’t help but praise the book for the parts that are really good, but I can’t recommend it either. I would have preferred it to be either all good or all shit, not this mixture of gold and rust.

#vampire books #terhi tarkiainen #pure mua #lois tilton #vampire winter

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postguiltypleasures · 5 years

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JANE THE VIRGIN Finale Articles Links Round Up

Jane the Virgin, a show I never missed and affected my emotions on surprising ways wrapped up last week. It did well by plots that I feel like I’ve only ever seen done badly. The finale was pretty perfect in that it highlight what was special about the show and giving us the viewers a loving goodbye. I don’t know where the show will ultimately fit in with the direction in which television is moving, it kind of feels like an end of something and the beginning of something. Going through these fair wells might be a first step.

I’m actually starting with a couple of articles that really weren’t about the show’s finale. The first is technically a review of Emily Nussbaum’s I Like to Watch, as she has been a great champion of the show, as well as generally insisting that the what is considered “serious” vs “frivolous” be reconsidered. This response to Nussbaum’s book starts in particular about her essay “Jane the Virgin isn’t a Guilty Pleasure”. Nussbaum’s essay does a great job at praising what the show does well as connecting it to earlier television shows. (Interestingly she doesn’t associate Jane with camp the way she did with Ugly Betty, nor does she list that as one of Jane’s predecessors despite the fact that both are US primetime networks adapting Latin American telenovelas. I’ll get more into why I think that is interesting and probably for the best later.) The article about her book does more to talk about how it’s been frequently overlooked for shows that seem created for men. In a lot of her book tour Nussbaum has spoken about how the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Sopranos were discussed around the time that they debuted drove her into tv criticism. If I were to pick something to be The Sopranos to Jane’s Buffy I’d probably go with Breaking Bad, as it had a notoriously difficult time getting its fans to care about/not hate Walt’s home life. Walt’s home life was about the slow consequences of his drug dealing and gangster activity. There was always a fair amount of gangster activity on Jane, but from watching Breaking Bad could leave you with the impression that there’s no way to make caring for an infant as exciting as the chaos of organized crime. Jane proved that isn’t true.

Also before the finale, The Ringer published this article that is sort of half praise/ half interview with the creator. It gets into the ways it played with the crime drama story types but never really treated it like that’s what it was about. It also gets into the writer’s room, and I was happy to learn that some people there have worked on telenovela’s in the past. It also has some quote’s from Jaime Camil who plays Jane’s father Rogelio de la Vega, which I thought were an interesting contrast to an interview he gave earlier in the show’s run. The Ringer article misleadingly identifies Camil as having starred in the “Spanish language version of Ugly Betty.” There were three Spanish language versions of Ugly Betty, or rather there were three Spanish language versions of the Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea which was the source material for Ugly Betty. Camil starred it the Mexican one, La Fea Más Bella, which debuted around the same time as Ugly Betty. (Fun fact, between LFMB and the later Por Ella Soy Eva, Camil has twice starred in Mexican remakes of Colombian telenovela’s in roles originated by Jorge Enrique Abello) I was at one point obsessed with the whole constant remaking of YSBLF phenomena and Ugly Betty in particular. It was taking on one of the most popular IPs of all time and had to do it in a very different format than the original. (Producing one episode a week for an indefinite number of years is very different than five episodes a week for approximately a year. For starters, there’s going to be a much smaller ensemble.) I never watched the original Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen. It wasn’t remade internationally with anything like the regularity as Betty, and ultimately that may have been in the American show’s favor. Part of me wants to say that Jane learned from some things Betty tried but didn’t necessarily execute so well. And another part of me thinks that not having the burden of massive international popularity allowed them to jettison some of the things that made it a harder to adapt for a different audience. In the original YSBLF, Betty’s family life and work life have this great tension where some of her more questionable decisions (specifically, choosing to help her boss commit fraud to the board of the company) are partially based in some disillusioning parts of her home life (namely, her father loosing his job due to the boss selling the company and never paying out his pension). Ugly Betty never played those two aspects of Betty’s life against her like that. In some ways it was much better to the character. (American Betty had professional ambition in a way that the original didn’t.) But in this not knowing how to connect her family and professional lives, it often felt like it was struggling to make the family life stories matter. Jane the Virgin never had this problem. Partially because it was much more interested in emotional reactions than plot twists, but also, because it didn’t need to follow an original’s example of making the work place drama the engine of the show. Between the different relationships they had with their source materials and how they mined the work/life balances of their character’s they were different shows, from different times. Too much comparison is just counterproductive.

Kathryn VanArendonk wrote beautifully about how the fantastical elements of the story made the more mundane plots like finding a good school for Mateo, and balancing child care and a burgeoning writing career, really work. VanArendonk doesn’t focus on how badly many other shows do on making the housekeeping side of life interesting. The fact that as a tv watcher you’ve been through so many examples of shows that feel like the drag or are just aimless when it comes to the personal life side of the work life divide does contribute towards the sort of miraculous feeling Jane sometimes created, but it’s probably for the best not to focus on the negative examples.

I also want to highlight this great personal essay about how the show dealt with both being an adult and having anxiety around sex, mostly because of cultural baggage. The show didn’t so much reject the things that we associate with the baggage (ie no one abandoned the Church. (Also not discussed was the fact that all three of the Villanueva women had anxiety about sex at some point in their stories, but as Xiomara’s was more about the aftermath of cancer and chemotherapy than culture created anxiety, so it doesn’t fit with Mariya Karimjee’s larger theme. Just bringing it up to say, I liked how Xiomara’s post-cancer story worked out.)

A final one from Vulture about the reveal that the narrator is the adult version of Jane’s son Mateo. I’m highlighting it because the Mateo has ADHD plot was one of the most moving stories the show did during the final season. ADHD is so misunderstood and there were so many ways that this could have gotten a too pat, wrong message of an ending. I’m glad voice over actor Anthony Mendez talks about how even as an adult it’s something with which he struggles.

I cheered for Petra for most of the series. However, due to things in my real life, I currently have a pretty low tolerance for stories about bad bosses. Petra’s worst quality was she was a terrible boss, mercurial and abusive. Inkoo Kang’s tribute to the character is good, and gets at why I’ve been interested in her, and her relationship with Jane, for so long. Despite finding Petra less likable in the final seasons than in earlier ones when she was more villainous, one of my favorite moments of hers did come this season. At one point she says that her “worst nightmare” is turning into her mother. It could have been just a throwaway one, but then the narrator tells us it’s true and shows us what it looks like, and it manages to be hilarious, heartbreaking a you get why this would be Petra’s worst nightmare.

(The Toast once dedicated a “Femslash Friday” to the Jane and Petra dynamic. Here’s the link if interested.)

After the finale aired Slate also published an article about how the Michael is not dead plot didn’t work and was a disservice to the way love works. I mostly agree. I never really cared with whom Jane ended up. The show was always more about figuring out haw to build and maintain relationships than proving who was more right for each other. And I did kind of like the “each in their own time” resolution to the love triangle. (I felt similarly to the one in Lost Girl.) I get why the show did it. I do agree it was why the final season dragged in some parts. I do think Michael coming back from the dead reinvigorated the Sin Rostro story just in time to climax on the penultimate episode. Whether or not that was worth it is up to you.

I do want to take this moment to point out that while watching Jane walk down the aisle in the final episode, I realized that there never really wasn’t a moment in the entire where I felt doubt that Jane was loved, or felt unlovable. The closest it ever got to that’s in its depictions of how growing up without a father affected her. But, as connecting with her biological father Rogelio and developing a very deep bond was such an important part of the show, that anxiety was never really felt for Jane. (Petra, on the other hand…) This makes her kind of an outlier of most of the series I watch, whether the was the point of the series (You’re the Worst, Crazy Ex Girlfriend) or kind of a side affect of the surreal and chaotic universe in which it’s set (Broad City, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it part of why it would be more likely to be misidentified as a guilty pleasure? Is it a sign about changes in what makes a heroine “relatable”?

I’ve repeatedly said here that I’m thinking about tapering the amount of tv I watch until it’s none. In Margaret Lyons’s review, she talks about how Jane was in some ways the show that replaced Mad Men in her heart, which reminded me that when Jane started I wasn’t sure I wanted to start any new tv shows. Also both show’s care about episode structure in a way that feels undervalued these days. I do kind of have to agree with Lyons that some of the final season felt like treading water. (Something that seemed to affect the more character than plot driven shows I’ve watched that have ended this year. This runs counter to most of my theory of what’s going on with tv these days.)

“Have you ever loved something so deeply it was almost impossible to talk about?” Jade Budowski wrote over at The Decider. And yes, for a while now, the things I like the most are the things I have the hardest time trying o talk about. It’s satisfying enough that you kind of want to just point and say “go, experience it for yourself.” Even though that runs the risk of letting it be taken as froth.

Over at Vox, Constance Grady wrote about how the finale worked, despite the fact that most of the conflict was resolved on the previous episode. It’s a loving tribute to how the show knew how to work and give us the happiest of endings without being too saccharine.

Finally, I want to day thanks for making Jane and Rafael’s wedding song Ximena Sariñana’s “Todo En Mi Vida”. Sure, I’ve been following Sariñana since her debut, Mediocre, so this is likely to appeal to me personally, but it’s also a beautiful song about learning to love the unexpected and build a new life around it.

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nothing-personal-my-dear · 6 years

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Spartacus: Vengeance Rewatch - Episode 1: Fugitivus

Sex Scene: All of them. They went to a whorehouse.

“Cock”: 4

“Cunt”: 2

“Kill Them All”: 0 (I wonder if this is said at all in S2 or 3)

“Fucking Gaul”: 3

Slow motion Face Punch:0

Episode Name Dropped by: Aurelia

Memorable Death: Aurelia

Favourite Line: “We must stand as one, or fall divided.”

- This is the greatest way they could have introduced the new Spartacus actor. It was amazing.

- Spartacus facing down that horse is beautiful.

- AGRON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- DONAR!! =]

- He’s still throwing his bloody sword.

- I love that Donar has this axe thing, it’s awesome and sets him apart from the other gladiators.

- This beginning fight scene is so well done.

- Agron oh gosh. He’s so angry, so crazed by his grief. Everyone is so wary of him, but like he lost his brother. My poor baby.

- “I believe the man dead.” – the moment I fell in love with Donar and his bromance with Agron.

- I can always rely on Agron to say “cock”

- Spartacus has never really been a savage until right now when he carves a message into a dead guy’s chest. Seriously, wtf.

- I’m so in love with Agron’s necklace.

- Ha! Rome, it looks like it’s still being built. That’s hilarious.

- Pompey mention!

- What is with all those masks?! How fucking creepy.

- “Where youth plummets, maturity may soar.”

- As someone who hasn’t ever paid any interest in wars, all this undoubtedly historically accurate war talk is super boring.

- Everyone under the sun is named Marcus

- Varinius!! BAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh man, seriously. Just, Brett Tucker is an Aussie actor that has been in basically everything! I can’t take him seriously.

- AND HE FUCKING SAID MONGRELS!

- Seriously this triangle between Ilithyia, Varinius, and Glaber is basically the entire subplot of S2.

- The one thing I get super bored of in Spartacus is men and their egos.

- Mira is literally in the sewers and she’s still a queen.

- Oh hey, the Veteran!

- The kid that says “I will kill many Romans” looks like Tyler Lockwood from Vampire Diaries.

- You can actually see Mira’s face fall when Aurelia comes into view. Like she knows that when Aurelia is around Spartacus can see no one else. It’s not a romantic thing, it’s a Varro thing.

- Agron and Donar bromance, I love it. Almost makes up for Duro’s death, almost.

- The Gauls are mostly comprised of New Zealanders – just an observation.

- I sometimes can’t believe that the gladiators treat the house slaves so poorly and sometimes don’t seem to give a fuck about any slaves still in chains.

- “Rabbits” - I still don’t understand this.

- Oh, Acer.

- Yessss Mira!!!!!

- Oh the showdown between the Gauls and the rest of the slaves is so intense and beautifully done.

- I really like that even with the new actor they still put all the same scars on him. Good job.

- Oh gosh. Mira loves Spartacus so much…..and S2 Spartacus clearly cares for her way more than he did in S1, but still. She deserves better.

- “I have proven troublesome to kill.”

- Gah, the thing with Spartacus in S2 is he cares more about killing Romans than protecting the other slaves. At least Mira and even Agron are there to pick up the slack.

- “I hear you wish to command my men.” – when I first heard this I thought it very antagonistic, like the fractions were splitting apart. But it’s more of Spartacus being the head honcho, and Crixus being a General that leads his own fraction but still reports to Spartacus. Warfare is not my thing but I’m learning.

- Yeah, because a curtain is going to give you so much privacy. Everyone can still hear you guys.

- “Did his blood bear fruit?”

- Trebius! Ah!

- Arena games!!! Oh how I miss you!

- Seppia really freaking frustrates me. She is so childish and has no idea the kinds of games she’s playing. She’s a fool.

- Seppius and Seppia are fucking right? That’s what they’re implying? A whole bunch of incest? I wanna hate it but I can see it.

- I don’t understand how the gladiator fights could be boring? Or how Batiatus’ gladiators could have made it more entertaining? You’re still watching two dudes kill each other.

- I haven’t even watch Star Wars but Oenomaus in that cloak gives me Jedi vibes.

- That guy in the alley gives me Pirates of The Caribbean vibes.

- On one hand whenever I see Oenomaus I’m like “Don’t hurt this precious baby.” But then again “Hell yes baby you kick their asses!”

- Holy shit!!!!!!!!!!! Arm bone through the skin!!!!!!! Shit! Knife through the eye!!!!! Ah! Right through the jaw!!!!! Oenomaus is such a badass!

- Aurelia talking about how much she wants to go back to Janis. Well, you shouldn’t have left him in the first place! Her pride was as foolish as any man’s.

- “That lopsided grin. Eye’s promising mischief. I’ve seen in many times, upon his father.” –seriously my shipper heart. Spartacus loved Varro, it’s canon.

- “I fell to love the crooked bend of Varro's lips long before the man himself.” “As did I.” – IT’S MOTHERFLIPPING CANON I TELL YOU.

- I mean Spartacus can be a kind man when he wants to. He’s just very single minded.

- Gotta give their art department props. Having a fake pregnant woman be naked, and it look real….like damn, they deserve a pat on the back.

- I am loving Ilithyia’s purple gown thing though, wowzah.

- Marcus Crassus mention again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- “She was a fucking bitch” – I find that fucking hilarious.

- Agron said bleat! Goat reference! My shipper heart!

- Wow, Spartacus said “whores” somehow that’s more shocking than anything else on this show.

- I love Agron’s loyalty to Spartacus but I wish Spartacus would see it too. In this season and the next he kind of treats Agron like crap.

- “You had me at whores.” – I love Donar.

- “Avoid unnecessary risk.” Sparty, baby, do you realise who you talking to?!

- Loving the idea of Mira, Donar, and Agron planning behind Spartacus’ back. These are the people who want to protect the other slaves, not spend every day covered in Roman blood.

- “As are all things, in pursuit of a woman.” Gotta love the salty gay trope. Agron pulls it off swimmingly.

- “I will tell Janis of you. Of the man who loved his father above all others.” CANON. I really didn’t ship Spartacus and Varro this much the first time around.

- “I gave my word. Blood and Honour. It yet speaks to the man.” as said in S1.

- Gladiators in hoods is everything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- Woman with a massive dildo fucking a dude. Yep.

- Oh! I think this is the first penis shots we’ve had in a while.

- Guy on Guy sex. Well then. So much gay sex in this series, it’s glorious.

- The four guys throwing the girl around makes me super fucking uncomfortable, especially when you can hear her. She is so not enjoying this.

- Another memorable death = dude jerking off and just as he’s about to finish, gets a sword through his throat.

- It’s gotta suck so bad for all these guys that are dying with their dicks out. Especially that guy that got a sword right between the legs. Ouch.

- Never noticed but there’s a very very large woman in the whorehouse and a skinny guy on all fours in front of her. I’m so curious about what’s happening there.

- How many innocent body slaves died in this attack???

- Poor boy with cum all over his face.

- Trebius is so fucking disgusting. Peeing all over that girl.

- I get that this girl is probably horrendously traumatized but she really have to go and kill the only lead they had to Naevia.

- AGRON KICKING THE SHIT OUTTA TREBIUS COS HE SOLD HIM AND DURO TO BATIATUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ahh my heart!

- I seriously hate Spartacus in this scene and it kind of tainted him for me. He’s telling Agron that he can’t kill Trebius as revenge for Duro, BUT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT SPARTACUS IS DOING WITH GLABER! He’s such a fucking hypocrite!

- Crixus sticking his hand inside Trebius’ gut is so gross.

- I get that Glaber is angry at Ilithyia but she clearly has some PTSD that is triggered by that house and he’s forcing her to stay there. Not cool.

- OVER THE CLIFF!! Yes Ilithyia!

- There’s no logical reason for that mask to be there, except to provoke memories.

- Flashback penis.

- I never noticed but Ilithyia has a really big mouth.

- I honestly thought the figure was gonna be Spartacus, I was so surprised to see Lucretia.

- Lucretia being out of her freaking mind is magical. All the props to the actress.

- “What fragments her shattered mind yet holds.”

- Seriously, the male ego.

- Old woman slave = headcanon that she ran the whole Battiatus household. Also, that young boy slave is super attractive, how has Agron not noticed this?!?

- “Grab your fucking cock.” – oh wait, maybe he has! Ha!

- Foreshadow of Agron not thinking house/body salves are worth much. Ahhhhhhh how wrong he shall be ;)

- “We knew this day would come” SPARTACUS YOU MADE THIS DAY COME, YOU WROTE A FUCKING MESSAGE! Gah!

- Angry little lost boy. Agron is my fave if you can’t already tell.

- “That is no longer my title.” – poor baby.

- “There is but one place for an animal without honour.”

- Singleminded Spartacus is one of my least faves.

- I love how they take Lucretia way back to the drought, to before Spartacus killed Theokoles.

- I really love how in this show they show woman with pubic hair, COS IT’S FUCKING NATURAL and women shouldn’t have to shave because society tells them to.

- “Smashed upon the cliffs.” – foreshadowing!

- Argh! This leaning back shit women do during sex scenes on tv annoys the hell outta me. That move is done purely for the male viewers. For the women doing it, it’s really fucking awkward.

- “You bark as a dominus.” “Sheep stand idle if not prodded by snapping jaw.” – I love Agron and Donar moments.

- “Let us compare teeth and have answer.” – they are basically talking about comparing dick sizes right?????

- Lucretia with dark hair and wearing a purple dress. Goddess.

- “Do not shed fucking tear.”

- Fucking love that Lucretia is the one to spot Spartacus.

- Seppius rolling his eyes at Glaber. Me too, bro, me too.

- Ah the foreshadow of Glaber and Seppia. Yuck.

- The rebels coming to Spartacus’ aid. I love their loyalty.

- Seriously Donar and his axe.

- Agron picking up Aurelia and throwing her over his shoulder. It’s hilarious because she is so freaking tiny compared to him, and also cos he’s super gay and doesn’t understand females at all.

- Lucretia and Crixus seeing each other again is super powerful.

- MIRA with a “fucking Gauls.” Did not see that coming.

- “Do any of us hold fucking worth to you?”

- Mira’s little rant to Spartacus is all well and good, but did she have to be mean to Agron.

- The Spartacus and Crixus bromance is strong in S2.

- VENGEANCE NAME DROP.

- Agron looks so little, so small and young. My baby.

- I still fucking hate Aurelia.

- I do love that Agron was willing to go and fight Glaber because of Aurelia, someone he didn’t even seem to like at all.Baby’s got a heart.

- THE BEGINNING OF THE REBEL ARMY!!!!!!!!!!!YAAAAAS!

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