#it might be the most complex and ambitious one i’ve tried so far

[oceanic-sunsets]

and we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)

and the shame, was on the other side

[bakugouisabitch]

do you think malik goes through periods where he's very fun and bubbly, but then like a switch he's very quiet and wants distance?

GOD YES YES THIS is exactly how I imagine him omg it makes so much sense.

First of all, YES 👏 Let 👏 Malik 👏 Be 👏 Bubbly 👏 And 👏 Loud 👏 2k21 because he DESERVES IT. He should always be happy and loud and it shouldn‘t bother Anyone

.

Okay that being said, I hc him to have a lot of trust issues, so, to get to experience his “real self” always takes a lot of time and “opening up”.

He’s not shy or an introvert, he just kind of doesn’t trust anyone except himself (and his siblings - most of all Rishid) and has been through so much shit that he keeps thinking any form of friendly approach from someone is all just a tactic to get to his vulnerable sides. (this funny fanart kind of gets my point across). And that’s exactly why he is like that too. When talking with strangers, he would go as far as being extremely polite and cheesy that you almost can’t recognise him anymore. But he’s doing it all to warm up to people and get to their weaker spots, just in case he’s going to use it against them. (see: his whole fake personality Namu-act that wasn’t even necessary for his plan to enter the Battle City finale...)

To get to Malik’s real self i HC requires a lot of digging and trust - which can take a lot of time. He also seems to be quite conflicted over what he really wants, because after all that time spent analysing and manipulating people just to understand their weak spots he’s left with nothing but a constant state of being alert and ready to use it against them. And when the moment never comes - because as hard as it is to swallow down for him, some people might have genuinely just nice intentions - he realises he wasted another opportunity for making new friends and ends up being full of guilt and regret and probably a big self loathing and once again alone. Then forms the question what do you really want? to make friends or enemies? And he’s not sure he knows the answer anyway. Shit, malik’s whole character design strikes me as being conflicted since he’s a whole mixture of traditional and modern af. He seems to be quite attached to his ancient roots and the nobility of his bloodline but he also seems to want to re-invent himself into that motorcycle-driving kid who said fuck destiny i create my own. But the way he talks and puts valor into his ancient beliefs (+ his father’s earrings) clearly shows he’s far too attached to it to let it go (this leads also to the whole deal of being literally born and raised to Serve and also his whole daddy issues, but that’s another page completely).

Like you said, there are moments where he goes completely quiet and wants distance because i can see him reconsidering every step he took. As confident and self-assured as he might appear, and the end it always seems like his biggest enemy is his own self (or his other self... he might get pretty quiet and dissociates also because he’s probably conversing with his alter in his head. But his alter is also another whole deal completely.)

Just like in Kaiba, I see a constant need to prove himself to be better than anyone in everything: His dressing up as the Pharaoh and saying he has the right for the throne, his modern style and extravagant motorcycle/boat, his emphasis on making the enemies remember his name... 

(see:

it’s all Trauma babey ✨

He seems to just live in a world where conflict prevails over everything. Every moment and every human interaction is regarded with caution and “how to get the upper hand in this” - because that’s All He’s Known His Entire Life. With the Millennium Rod he also got the power to literally read into humans’ minds (in the manga it’s all explained even better). Seeing the desperation and the desire for his wife in Pandora, the homicidal tendencies and dark past of the mime boy he uses... these were all elements he studied and gathered in his collection of “humans just want power over you”, which just increased his trust issues. Also, his tendency to punish his ghouls when they fail clearly reflects a sense of education where you get punished if you don’t succeed and plus being a capricorn this tends to make a perfectionist out of him (and it’s once again something that was ebbed into his brain as a child thanks to his father). So he strikes me as the type who is never satisfied with the end result of something because it could always be Better.

Anyway, trauma and fears aside (and he has a lot of them) he sparks me to be a very loud and extrovert boy and he would probably be shining brighter than anyone if it wasn’t for all the shit he’s been through. He is very intelligent and a fast learner (I hc him to know fluid arabic, japanese and english) and he’s a good observer and very rational. He reacts with his brain first before using his instincts, but he seems to be very driven by his emotions (since they are the reason he does literally everything). He’s ambitious and cunning but with a soft, soft heart like,, I love how the whole deal of Malik in the manga is that he literally Couldn’t bring himself to gain the full power of the Rod and kill Yugi because he’s so soft at heart. No matter how evil and controlloing he tries to be at the end he just Can’t. It was his alter who did it, who took his place in his most vulnerable moment because he literally Couldn’t take it. He would have died.

“His father filled him with pain and sadness... until all he wanted was to die... So in order to survive, in order to keep going, he had to create another self...”

His alter keeps calling this weakness but it basically shows that he’s just good. He’s good at heart and he needs light in his life to survive. (The whole deal of light and shadows that is made in battle city which also includes Rishid is just so beautiful in the manga - i totally rec reading the battle city arc to you to get malik better). He’s soft at heart and this is why I can see him being a loud and bubbly person once he‘s 100% sure there are no bad intentions behind someone. Because he would be so confident and very diva-ish in his attitude of “I deserve the best and the best only”, despite having so many fears he’s battling against daily. Once he loves and trusts someone - and if that someone makes him feel his best - he would cling to them almost desperately this is how I hc him also in my fics and he would be so happy and loud about it, because it’s like FINALLY taking a Break from that “mental state” of alert and control he Has To keep up to Prove to be good. He’s finally his real self.

anyway i could talk abt this boy for hours like i could write an essay over everything regarding him because he’s one of the most complex and rich characters i’ve ever known and *bites fist* I JUST LOVE HIM AND HE DESERVES TO BE HELD SO BAD.

[pikapeppa]

Felassan/f!Lavellan: Paint

Chapter 26 of The Love That Grows From Violence (post-Trespasser Felassan x Tamaris Lavellan) is up!

In which Felassan reveals yet another hobby. 😂 Featuring gorgeous art this week by @elbenherzart​!!

~8100 words; read on AO3 instead.

The following days were a buzz of activity for Tamaris and Felassan. Gone was the lazy flow of leisurely-executed activities that had previously characterized their time; now, it almost felt to Tamaris like there weren’t enough hours in the day to do everything they wanted to do. 

Their morning sparring sessions were becoming longer and more strenuous as Felassan’s grasp of his magic grew. He switching between types of magic now in his attacks, transitioning from fire to lighting to ice to raw Fade strikes while using barriers to repel Tamaris’s blows, and by the time they finished their sparring these days, they were often too fatigued to fuck right afterwards like they’d been doing when his magical control was more modest.

Outside of their sparring sessions, Felassan kept working on his magic by himself. He tinkered with Dorian’s crystals and pored through the few tomes on magic that he’d found in the mansion’s library, as well as a few tomes that Varric had given him from the stock that was salvaged from the Gallows during the Kirkwall Uprising. Dorian was sending a selection of more complex books from Tevinter, and until they arrived, Felassan cheerfully made fun of the Chantry-based books he did have access to, even as he read them. 

While Felassan was working on his magic, Tamaris worked on getting herself back up to speed about current events happening in Thedas and what the other branches of the wolf hunt were doing. They sat together in the study, Felassan working at the desk while Tamaris spread her papers and reports across the couch and floor, and they frequently made snarky comments to each other about what they were reading. Although it wasn’t pleasant to be so busy again, Tamaris had to admit that it was nice to have a constant companion who was working just as hard as she. 

One day, Tamaris looked up from one of Leliana’s coded letters to find Felassan leaning back against the desk with his arms folded and a pensive frown on his face.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He met her eye. “That piece of ironwood I gave you. Can I have it?”

Her eyes widened. He’d given her his piece of ironwood so long ago now that she’d been half-wondering if he’d forgotten about it. “Of course,” she said, and she stood from the couch. “What are you — are you going to make a staff with it?”

“I’m going to try,” he said.

“That’s great!” she exclaimed. “That’s – I’ll go get it right now.” She ran upstairs to her bedroom and pulled the short length of ironwood out of her dresser. 

It was wrapped in a fine silk scarf Josephine had given her. She carefully unwrapped it, then ran back downstairs and held it out to Felassan.

He smiled faintly as he took it. “Why do I get the impression that you’re more excited about this than I am?”

“It is exciting,” she insisted. “You’re going to… I mean, I don’t really know what you’re going to do, but you’re going to try and make this into a staff! That means you feel pretty confident that you can do it, right?”

“I’m reasonably confident that I won’t blow up the house while trying,” he said wryly.

She frowned. “Come on, Felassan, don’t be so down on yourself. You’ve got so much more control than you did a month ago.” Just this morning, they’d been discussing the possibility that he shouldn’t spar with her anymore out of concern that he might harm her, since his attacks were surpassing the bounds of her barriers to repel him.

“True,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I am close to what I used to be.” He twirled the ironwood in his fingers and gave her a knowing look. “Using magic in this time truly is a matter of control and skill, you know. The feeling of magic being like a second seamless heartbeat really was an artifact of my time. Waking up in this time was like… like having to learn to speak again. Conscious manipulation of a skill I once took for granted.” He gestured at himself. “This relearning is like doing that all over again, but even more difficult since I can’t do what I intend to do.”

“You couldn’t before,” she said emphatically. “Now you can.”

He shrugged. “I can sometimes.”

She frowned more deeply. “Most of the time. You do what you mean to do three-quarters of the time now.”

He smirked. “Have you been keeping a ledger of my progress that I don’t know about?”

“I’m proud of you, okay?” she blurted.

He raised his eyebrows, and she hunched her shoulders defensively. “I’m just… You thought you might not recover anything when you first got here. You’ve come a long way.”

His expression softened with fondness. “I haven’t tried to do anything particularly complex. Certainly nothing as complex as making a staff.”

“That doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “Just try, and if you can’t do it right away, keep trying. You’ll get it.”

His smile widened. “Look at you, being all optimistic. If not for your scowl, I’d think you were trying to seduce me.”

She scoffed and gently shoved his chest. “Go make your staff, you brat. I’ve got reports to read.” She started back toward the couch, but Felassan grabbed her hand before she could get very far.

He pulled her close and stroked the metal joint of her left wrist. “Ise inor vhenan. Do you know what this means?”

Her heart skipped a beat. “‘Heart of fire’?” she said hesitantly.

“‘Fire in the heart,’ yes,” he said. “It’s an Elvhen term for someone who refuses to give up, even when the odds are stacked against them.” He smiled faintly. “Determination to the point of stubbornness.”

“Uh-huh,” she said flatly. “You’re calling me the stubborn one here, I guess?”

His smile widened. “I’m saying you are the fire in my heart, Tamaris. And I appreciate your stubborn reminders that I am, in fact, getting better.”

Her belly burst into giddy butterflies. The fire in my heart... 

She bit the inside of her cheek to stop a stupid grin from spreading across her face. She gave him a chiding look instead. “Now who’s trying to seduce whom?”

His smile curled with mischief, and he tipped her chin up with a gentle finger. “Not when you have so many fascinating reports to read,” he murmured. He placed a sweet kiss on her lips, and for a blissful moment, she melted helplessly into his kiss.

He leaned away from her with a smile, and Tamaris grinned goofily at him before tottering back to her spot on the couch. Felassan chuckled and returned to his desk, and it was with a light and happy heart that Tamaris returned to her pile of reports.

Their evenings were spent with Varric and Dorian discussing the ways they could use Felassan’s information to benefit the wolf hunt. Tamaris felt that getting in touch with the Grey Wardens’s commanders should be a top priority. “We should be telling them not to kill the last two archdemons, right?” she said one night as they gathered at the dining table with Dorian’s crystal. “They should know the archdemons might be guarding against the Blight, so if anything, the Wardens should be protecting the archdemons from being found by the darkspawn.” Based on the information that Felassan had outlined, they had come to the conclusion that events like the Fifth Blight happened when the darkspawn infected the archdemons, and not that the archdemons were galvanizing the darkspawn into action like everyone seemed to think.

Felassan shrugged. “It probably would be ideal for them to stop attacking the archdemons, yes.”

“But you don’t think they’ll stop,” Varric said.

Felassan smiled faintly. “I think they have several centuries’ worth of evidence that killing archdemons coincides with the end of a Blight event, and no reason to accept the hypothesis of a random elf.”

“Well, we still have to try,” Tamaris retorted.

“I am not saying not to try,” Felassan said. “But I also think it might be worth launching our own independent ventures to find the archdemons.”

Varric grimaced. “That’s a pretty ambitious undertaking, Jester.”

“True,” Felassan said casually. “You could also speak to individual lower-ranking Wardens rather than approaching their commanders.”

Dorian’s voice floated up from the crystal. “Why shouldn’t we try and approach the Warden-Commanders?”

“People in charge are usually disinclined to listen to strange ideas,” Felassan said. “They’re considerably more skeptical than the average person. The more experience they have, the more convinced in their rightness — and the more closed-off — they tend to be.”

Varric chuckled. “Not a fan of authority figures, are you?”

Felassan widened his eyes. “I respect authority figures deeply. That doesn’t mean I listen to them or follow what they say.”

Tamaris snorted with amusement. Felassan smiled at her, then casually waved his hand. “Anyway, we should start looking for stray lower-ranking Wardens. Not only might they be more open-minded, but they could lead us to Weisshaupt, if that’s still where you think the Wardens are gathering.”

Varric scribbled a memo in his notebook. “All right. More efforts to find the Wardens. Any other thoughts?”

 Dorian spoke up. “I was thinking about the fact that Solas has so much knowledge at his disposal now, with those two other souls piggybacking on his body. It certainly puts us at a disadvantage, but he’s not the only person we know whose head is stuffed with ancient knowledge.”

Tamaris nodded ruefully; she’d been thinking the same thing. “You mean Morrigan.”

 “Yes,” Dorian said. “We should try and get her assistance. There must be information from the Well of Sorrows that can benefit us.”

She ran her hand slowly through her hair. When Dorian spoke again, his voice was gentle, as though he could see her reluctance. “I know you wanted to let her raise Kieran in peace, but if Solas drops the Veil, there will be nowhere safe left for them to live. Or any of us, for that matter.”

“No, I know. You’re right.” Tamaris sighed and lowered her hand. “How should we even go about trying to find her? She doesn’t care about keeping in touch with anyone.”

Varric tapped his quill idly on his notebook. “The Hero of Ferelden would be a good bet. Nightingale said she and Morrigan were close back in the day.”

Tamaris frowned. “That was over ten years ago. And isn’t Mahariel already going off to spy on the qunari?”

“She’d have time to send a letter,” Varric said reasonably. 

“I guess,” Tamaris said, somewhat reluctantly. She still felt guilty about the Hero of Ferelden doing so many tasks for the wolf hunt after everything she’d already done for Ferelden, but no one seemed to have any choice about getting pulled into all of this. 

“Okay,” Varric said as he took another note. “Get the hero to write to the swamp witch.” He looked up at Felassan and Tamaris. “Any other ideas?”

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about, actually,” Tamaris said. She gave Felassan a critical look. “The Well of Sorrows. The fact that it even existed and that Mythal had warriors who were bound to her will. Don’t you think that’s fucked up?”

He pulled a little face. “It’s not a fate I would ever choose, that’s for certain.”

“So why did she make anyone choose it?” Tamaris demanded. “Why make anyone be bound to her will?”

“Remember that the Sentinel order arose around the time that the Evanuris were all starting to war with each other,” Felassan said. “In retrospect, I wonder if the rising of the Sentinels might have been the first sign that Mythal was worried she would be betrayed. An order of warriors who are bound to your will means they can’t betray you, not even if you die. Allegedly die, that is,” he added.

Tamaris folded her arms. In her opinion, that was no excuse. “What did Solas think of the Sentinels when Mythal started recruiting them?” she asked.

Felassan grimaced again. “He was… conflicted,” he said slowly. “On the one hand, Abelas and the others were willingly giving themselves into Mythal’s will, so technically they were submitting to her by choice. But by submitting to her, they were effectively making themselves her slaves.” Felassan twisted his lips ruefully. “It certainly kept him up at night, even if he didn’t speak against her outright.”

Tamaris relaxed slightly at this. “It didn’t seem to sit right with him when we were there, either.” 

Felassan nodded and gave her an appraising look. “You never considered drinking from the Well, did you?”

“I mean, sure, I considered it for a second,” she said. “Until Solas refused point-blank to drink from it. If he was saying no, then I sure as fuck wasn’t going to do it.”

Felassan snorted a laugh. “Wise of you to follow his example. It would be a very different Tamaris sitting before us now if you had drunk from the Vir’Abelasan.” He raised an eyebrow. “Or perhaps you wouldn’t be sitting here at all, if Solas really is hosting Mythal.”

Tamaris frowned, but Dorian filled in his unspoken thoughts. “Fasta vass. You think he would have taken control of Tamaris via Mythal?”

Tamaris’s guts went cold at the thought, and Felassan’s answer only discomfited her more. “It’s possible,” he said.

“So that means Morrigan could be in trouble now, then,” Tamaris said tensely. “And Kieran too.”

“Also possible,” Felassan said.

“Shit. Fuck.” She ran her hands through her hair, then gestured at Varric’s notebook. “Write that down. Trying to find her should be a priority.”

“Fen’Harel won’t kill them, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” Felassan said. 

Varric gave him a skeptical look. “If he’s willing to bring the Veil down on us, he’s probably not too concerned about killing one woman and her kid.”

“It’s not like that,” Tamaris said. “Solas doesn’t want to kill more people than he has to.” 

Varric looked at her in surprise, and Dorian sounded surprised as well when he replied. “That almost sounded like you’re defending him.”

“She’s not defending him,” Felassan said. “She’s just explaining him.”

She looked up to find Felassan smiling at her. But instead of smiling back, she frowned. “Can you explain something to me? Why did he trust her?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Who, Morrigan?”

She gave him a chiding look. “No. Mythal. She was so fucking shady. The dwarf stuff, the Well of Sorrows stuff, hiding her dragon without telling him so he thought she was dead, not to mention how smug and bitchy she was when I met her, and all the shitty things Morrigan said about being raised by her. How could Solas have trusted her?”

His smile began to melt into that look of anachronistic melancholy that made Tamaris’s heart twist. “I don’t know if it is possible to explain the strength of the ties that exist between them,” he said quietly. “Can any of us even imagine the depth of love that could develop between two beings who have known each other for several thousand years? Solas knew Mythal since he was barely more than a wisp. She was one of the main sources of pride that fed and fostered him before he became an elf. She shaped him in ways that none of us can fully understand. Even if he later realized that some of her proudest achievements were terrible mistakes, the depth of his devotion to her would have made him incapable of seeing her as truly flawed.”

Dorian hummed an acknowledgement. “Love is blind, hm?”

Varric grunted. “It’s a literary cliché for a reason.”

“It really is,” Felassan said. His tone was jocular, but his smile was wry and sad.

Tamaris reached over and squeezed his thigh. Then Varric snapped his fingers. “Hey, that reminds me. I was thinking about the whole Mythal-hiding-her-dragon thing the other day, and I thought, uh… well, what if Mythal’s dragon really is dead?”

Felassan straightened in his chair. “Interesting. Then how do you propose that she survived?”

Varric put his quill down. “Well, Hawke had this amulet that Flemeth told her to take to the Dalish. She took it to our friend Merrill’s clan, and Merrill did some kind of ritual, and Flemeth popped out of the amulet like… like, uh…”

“Like magic?” Dorian suggested wryly.

Varric laughed. “Yeah, I guess. Obviously.”

Dorian chuckled, but to Tamaris’s surprise, Felassan just stared at Varric without laughing.

“Felassan, what’s wrong?” she asked.

He continued to stare at Varric. “Why didn’t you mention this the other day when I was talking about the dragons?”

Varric shrugged. “I didn’t think of it then.”

“I wish you had,” Felassan said. “That changes everything. If Mythal’s dragon truly was killed, but she had another piece of her life essence stored in an amulet…” He trailed off, then snorted a sudden little laugh. “Amulets are far easier to hide than dragons, you know.”

Varric shrugged and picked up his quill. “I mean, I could be wrong. You can read The Tale of the Champion yourself and see what you think.”

“You should read it, actually,” Tamaris piped in. “There’s more detail in there about Merrill and her eluvian, too.” She turned to Varric. “It’s the same eluvian that gave the Hero of Ferelden the blight, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what Daisy said,” Varric replied.

Felassan looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, an eluvian gave the Hero of Ferelden the blight?” he said sharply.

Varric tilted his head in an equivocal gesture. “Well, maybe it didn’t directly give Mahariel the blight, especially if only living stuff can have the blight. But it was definitely involved, from what Daisy told us.” He narrowed his eyes. “Hey, eluvians aren’t alive, are they?”

“No, they’re… they’re not alive,” Felassan said numbly. He kept staring at Varric in a stunned sort of way that made Tamaris nervous.

She tapped his thigh. “Felassan, are you–?”

He suddenly burst out laughing — a distinctly hysterical-sounding laugh. Tamaris shifted closer to him and held out her hand, and he grabbed it as he dragged in a breath. 

She squeezed his fingers. “Just breathe,” she said soothingly.

He nodded, then burst out another uncontrolled laugh. “Just when I think I have a grasp on this time, I realize something enormously significant that I missed,” he wheezed.

“What do you think you missed?” Dorian asked.

Felassan giggled before dragging in another calming breath. “An eluvian that’s steeped somehow in the blight makes me think there is a specific place that it was keyed to access. A place that was so catastrophically affected by the blight that the eluvians connected to it might be growing red lyrium.”

Tamaris’s eyes widened. “Arlathan?” she breathed.

Felassan nodded and chuckled, and Tamaris sighed. “Fuck. So we should try and get Merrill somewhere safe too, then.”

Varric sighed. “I hate to tell you this, but I haven’t heard from Daisy in a while.”

Tamaris’s stomach went cold once more. “You think she’s working with Solas?”

Varric twisted his lips sadly. “She’d have good reason to, if he sweet-talked her with stories about the ancient elves.”

Felassan sighed. “That’s good.”

Tamaris frowned at him, affronted. “It’s good? What do you mean, it’s good? One more ally for Solas means one less for us!”

Felassan gave her a chiding look. “It would also mean that an eluvian leading straight to the Black City is under Solas’s control and not, for example, Tevinter’s. Neither is… ideal, but having that eluvian in Tevinter hands is probably worse.” He cocked his head. “Probably.”

“That hurts my feelings slightly,” Dorian said.

Felassan chuckled, then sighed and rubbed his forehead, and Tamaris studied him with a pang of sympathy. He looked so tired. 

She squeezed his hand once more. He gave her a little smile, then squeezed her hand in turn before kicking his feet up on the table. “In any case, I know what’s next on my reading list.” He shot Varric a smirk. “Maybe you should just give me an annotated bibliography of your work so I can catch up on everything I need to know about the last twenty years.”

Varric huffed in amusement. “I guess I could get you a copy of all my works. I am just a humble servant to my loyal readers, after all.”

Felassan smiled at him. “A sweet sentiment. That reminds me, how is your most loyal reader?”

Varric rolled his eyes. “Cassandra’s fine. Yes, I wrote her a smut scene. And no, you can’t read it.”

Dorian burst out laughing while Felassan complained playfully about not being allowed to read Varric’s smut, and Tamaris listened to the three of them faux-bickering with a bittersweet feeling in her chest. 

Later that evening, long after Dorian ended the call and Varric had gone home, Tamaris trudged gloomily back to the study to read some more reports. A minute later, Felassan sidled into the study as well.

He pushed some of her papers aside to sit down beside her, and Tamaris poked him in the arm. “Hey, don’t touch my mess. I have a system.”

He draped his arm over the back of the couch. “You’re not really going to continue working now, are you?”

She scratched her ear. “Well, I — there was one last report I was in the middle of reading, so I just want to finish it.”

“Finish it tomorrow,” he said. 

She gave him a chiding look. “You’re being a brat.”

“And you’re working far too hard for someone who doesn’t actually have anything to do.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Do you have to rub it in? I feel guilty enough already.”

He tilted his head. “You feel guilty staying in this house with me while my magic is too uncontrolled to travel?”

Her eyes widened in dismay. “Wha– no, that’s not what I mean at all!”

“Then why bother feeling guilty?” he asked.

She gazed at him in exasperation. “It’s — I can’t just turn it off, okay? Everyone else is working hard, including you. I need to do something.”

He shrugged. “You can help me with making my staff.”

Her irritation melted into surprise. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said. “You have full control of your magic. It will form a stabilizing influence to help me channel mine into the ironwood.”

She smiled at the thought of helping Felassan with something magical, then wilted slightly. “Are you sure you don’t want Dorian’s help instead? His mana reserves are way stronger than mine.”

Felassan smirked. “Jealous, are you?”

“No, for once,” she said snarkily. “Just being practical.”

His smile widened. “So you admit that you are jealous of my friendship with Dorian.”

She rolled her eyes and picked up her half-read report. “Fuck off and let me read my report, will you?”

He chuckled and plucked the papers from her hand. “To answer your question, no. I don’t want his help. Even if he could help via the sending crystal, which he can’t, I would still be asking for your help instead.”

“And why’s that?” she grumbled.

“Because I’ll enjoy feeling the hum of your magic in my fingers when I use the staff,” he replied.

She looked at him with fresh curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“You’ll leave a magical signature in the wood if you help me make my staff,” he explained. “It will be an enjoyable feeling when I’m blowing apart our enemies.” 

“Oh,” she said dumbly. His tone was casual, but she couldn’t help but feel oddly flattered that he would want to feel her magical signature during a fight. 

She shyly tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Well, um. Sure, I’d be happy to help.”

“Excellent,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll let you know when I need your hands.”

She blinked in confusion. “Oh, you – you don’t want to do this now?”

“Oh, no,” he said casually. “My experimentation today proved that I need more time to practice the spells for imbuing our signatures into the wood, not to mention tailoring it to the size-modulating spell I’ll be putting on the staff.” He lifted one eyebrow. “Besides, we’re not working anymore tonight.” 

“We’re not, huh?” she said wryly.

“No,” Felassan said. “We’re going to do something fun.”

His tone and the curl of his lips were mischievous, and Tamaris smirked. “Like what?” she said drolly.

His answer surprised her, though. “Like painting the walls.” 

She wilted. “You want to start painting the walls? Now?” She eyed the plain washed walls of the study with some resignation.

“Not those walls, and not that kind of paint,” he said. “Come.” He stood up and held out his hand.

Tamaris sighed and allowed him to pull her up from the couch. He led her to the foyer and jerked his thumb at the east-facing wall of the foyer, which they’d painted a deep peacock blue. “This bores me,” he said. “I think we should paint a mural.”

She balked slightly. “A mural?” Her mind instantly went to the murals Solas had painted on the walls of the rotunda: those huge, floor-to-ceiling works that he’d painted during the year he’d spent by her side — beautiful masterpieces that she’d once considered as tributes to his love for her, but which had later been too painful for her to look at, leading her to avoid the rotunda altogether. 

Felassan, as usual, picked up on her thoughts. He gave her a knowing look. “Not a mural like Fen’Harel’s. Something much simpler and much less planned.” 

Tamaris gave him a cautious look. “What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing in particular, really,” he said. He looked at the wall and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “I usually just start painting and see where my hands take me.”

She gazed at him with growing confusion. “W-wait. You… do you know how to paint?”

He shrugged. “I have been known to paint sometimes.”

She gaped at him. “Seriously? Why didn’t you tell me?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Maybe I didn’t want to be made fun of for having yet another hobby.”

She gently punched his arm. “Don’t be stupid! I would never make fun of you for being an artist! Would I have seen anything you painted? In the Vir Dirthara or any ancient temples or anything?” Her eyes widened. “Or — or even at Skyhold?”

He gave her a mischievous grin. “You flatter me by suggesting anything I paint would be worthy of such illustrious locations.”

She eyed him shrewdly. “That's not an answer.”

He chuckled. “You’re right. And you might have seen some of my work, though it would be hard to tell it apart from the work of others.”

“What do you mean?”

He let out a little huff of laughter and rubbed his mouth, as though he was thinking of a private joke. “Did you ever see quick, messy paintings of elven warriors going to battle on halla?”

“Yes, in many places,” she said. She paused, then double-taked at him. “Wait, those were by you?”

“Not just me,” Felassan said. “Fen’Harel’s rebels had a tendency to leave our mark in the places where we foiled our foes.”

Tamaris stared at him, then smiled. “You vandalized the Evanuris’s property while you were freeing their slaves?”

Felassan grinned. “I like to think we improved their decor, much like you and I are doing in this house. Now let’s see how we can improve this wall, why don’t we?” He started opening the pails of paint, then glanced up at Tamaris. “Can you bring some bowls so we can mix the colours?”

“Sure,” she said. She hurried to the kitchen and came back a minute later to find that Felassan had already laid some dropcloths on the floor along the base of the wall.

He gestured to the floor. “Set them here. You don’t mind ruining those bowls with paint, do you?”

“I don’t give a single fuck about these bowls,” she said.

He snickered. “I figured as much.” He poured together some red and yellow paint to make a deep orange shade, then looked up at her as he stirred the paint. “What colours are you in the mood for?”

She blinked in surprise. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” he said drolly. “What colours do you want to start with?”

She recoiled. “What? No. I’m not — I’ll just watch.”

He paused in his stirring. “That won’t do. You have to paint.”

She laughed at his bossy tone. “No I don’t. I’ll just watch.” She sat on the carpet and wrapped her arms around her knees, perfectly willing to watch Felassan the way she used to watch Solas during the long nights when he painted his murals.

Felassan gave her a chiding look, then gestured for her to come closer. “Come, avise. Paint with me. You’ll like it.”

She stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t know how to paint.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think I knew how to paint before I started vandalizing the Evanuris’s walls?”

“I thought you were ‘improving their decor’, not vandalizing,” Tamaris retorted.

He grinned. “Silly me. Of course that’s what we were doing. Now come, I need your help to improve this wall. What colours do you want to add?”

She gave him a knowing look. “If I touch that wall, I’m going to fuck it up.”

“Anything you do will be an improvement over the wallpaper that was here before,” he said.

She snorted a laugh. “You know what, that’s true.”

He raised his eyebrows hopefully, and Tamaris finally gave in with a sigh. “Fine. How about…” She paused and gazed idly into his expectant violet eyes.

“Purple,” she said. “Mix me up some purple paint.” 

“Purple it is,” he said. He mixed together some red and blue paint and added some white to lighten the shade, then held out the bowl.

She stood up and took the bowl. “I need a brush.”

“Use your fingers,” he said.

She recoiled slightly. This would make an enormous mess if she painted with her hands. “Are you serious?”

“I never joke about vandalism,” he said. “I take it very seriously.”

He was grinning. His eyes were dancing with mischief and he looked so carefree and young, and Tamaris couldn’t help but smile in response to his joy. 

She blew out a breath. “All right, but if it looks really bad, we’re painting over it.” She dipped her fingers in the thick paint, then smeared some of it on the wall. 

She immediately regretted what she’d done. The paint began to run in slow drips, and Tamaris was forced to catch it with her fingers and smear it even more. Exasperated, she started rubbing the paint haphazardly onto the wall until it was a blobby patch of purple.

She threw Felassan an I-told-you-so look. “See? It looks like shit.”

He shook his head. “Keep going,” he said. He was still smiling, and Tamaris gazed at him with rising annoyance.

“Keep going with what?” she demanded. “It’s an ugly smudge.”

“You had something in mind when you started painting,” he said. “Keep going with it.” He picked up the bowl of orange paint, then padded over to the other end of the wall and began dashing the paint onto the wall in quick practiced strokes that clearly told her he’d done this a thousand times.

She sighed, then dipped her fingers in the paint again and kept slapping it haphazardly onto the wall in a series of vaguely rounded irregularly-sized blobs. A few minutes later, she set the bowl down and wiped her hand on the dropcloth before looking over at what Felassan was doing. 

Her eyebrows jumped up. Felassan was painting a series of what looked like stylized orange teardrops that varied in size and shape, but the shifting shades of orange and red and yellow were clearly meant to signify fire. 

She narrowed her eyes. The shifting colours in his painted flamedrops represented such a subtle blend. How was he managing to make the colours meld so seamlessly? He was holding the bowl of orange paint, but the buckets of yellow and red were sitting on the floor a good two metres away from him. 

She stepped away from the wall, and Felassan looked over at her. His gaze darted to the wall, and he smiled. “Clouds,” he said.

She grunted and rolled her eyes. “Really original, I know.”

He gave her a chiding look. “A wise woman once said you shouldn’t be so down on yourself.” He approached her end of the wall and examined her purple smudgy clouds for a second, then dipped his fingers into his bowl of orange paint and added a dash of orange to the underside of each cloud.

Tamaris raised her eyebrows. The orange underline gave the impression that each blobby cloud was lit from below by the setting sun. It was exactly what she’d been thinking of when she started to paint: sitting on the roof with Felassan while the fading light of day lit the clouds aglow from beneath.

She looked at him, and he raised his eyebrows. “Better? Worse?” He smiled faintly. “Did I ruin your artistic vision?” 

She swallowed hard, feeling oddly emotional by his addition. She shook her head. “You un-ruined it,” she said gruffly. 

His smile widened. “Oh good. I’d always dearly hoped to un-ruin something during the course of my life.” 

She scoffed, then nodded her chin at his drops of flame. “What are you doing over there?”

“Sketching,” he said. “Working out an idea.” He nodded at her clouds. “Keep going. Or paint something else.”

She nodded, but as Felassan returned to his side of the wall with his bowl of orange paint, she couldn’t help but watch him instead. He continued painting drops of flame on the wall, then eventually put the orange paint aside and picked up the bucket of green paint instead. He set the bucket on the floor by his feet and started scrawling green shapes on the wall that looked like stylized leaves, and Tamaris was once again awed — and bemused — by how seamlessly he seemed to be blending the orange of the flames into the green of the leaves. 

She watched him with unabashed interest, her own painting endeavours forgotten in favour of watching Felassan instead. He eventually paused and smiled at her. “If you’re going to stare, this really is your chance to paint a picture. The paints are open and everything.” 

She smiled at his cheeky remark. “I’d honestly rather watch,” she said. “I want to see what you come up with.”

He gave her a reproving look, and she waved dismissively. “I mean it. I’ll have more fun watching you than I will with actually painting.”

He frowned at her for a moment longer, then finally shrugged. “All right, but you’re going to start off the next mural. I insist on it.”

She wilted slightly. “The next one?”

He nodded. “We need to cover every wall of this house with filthy knife-ear art.”

Tamaris burst out a laugh. “That would be pretty good revenge for how aggressively Orlesian this house was before we got here.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” he said complacently. “I have always enjoyed exacting petty revenge through the use of paint.”

She beamed at him. “You really are a vandal, you know that?”

He bowed politely to her. “Thank you, Tamaris. That warms my heart.”

She chuckled and settled on the carpet once more. She hadn’t been self-deprecating when she’d told Felassan she wanted to watch him instead of doing the painting. She’d always enjoyed watching artists working on their craft — and one of the artists she’d most enjoyed watching, unfortunately, was Solas.

She’d never seen an artist who worked the way Solas did. Watching him transform the rotunda walls from raw rock to smooth plaster to charcoal sketches and finally to fully-rendered murals had been, in her eyes, its own form of magic. Solas’s careful stepwise method had also been something to marvel at; he always started with a lovingly-crafted small-scale sketch of each design before translating the sketch to the walls in perfect proportion, and the actual painting of the mural was an all-night process that exemplified his focus and methodical devotion to the art. During those all-night painting sessions, Solas was intent and focused and almost completely silent, and Tamaris couldn’t remember a single time when he’d faltered or made a mistake in the execution of his spectacular works.

Watching Felassan paint, on the other hand... truly, it was nothing like watching Solas. Felassan hadn’t planned a thing, opting instead to experiment directly on the walls with his fingers instead of the sorts of fine brushes that Solas used to use. His movements were loose and relaxed and lacking in precision, and he kept jumping between the different elements of the scene he was creating: adding a bunch of those green leaf shapes, then adding some more flames, then swiping a streak of gold in a bold vertical arch through the cluster of flames before starting to add some violet clouds to his end of the mural. He hummed to himself as he worked and made little playful comments to her over his shoulder, and when the occasional drop of paint rolled slowly down the wall from his quick and messy application, he simply blended it back into the wall or painted over it with a new leaf or flame. 

She stared shamelessly at Felassan’s emerging work. His application method appeared slapdash and careless, but the effect was anything but; his work was striking and bold, and to Tamaris’s eye, very appealing. The lines varied from dark saturated lines to graceful faded streaks, giving his mural a dynamic and energetic feel that was more emotion than story, and Tamaris felt energized in turn as she watched him moving from one end of the wall to the other and back. 

The longer he worked, the less he spoke and the more focused he seemed to become, even as his movements remained loose and flowing. He looked incredibly graceful as he moved across the wall, and he was using both hands now to paint, and–

Wait. Both hands? she thought. And with a jolt, she realized that Felassan was no longer holding a bowl of paint in his hand. Even so, the colours continued to flow from his fingers as though he had dipped his fingers into the paint. But how…? 

She narrowed her eyes and watched him more carefully. And eventually, with a rising of wonder, she realized what he was doing. He kept gesturing in the direction of the paints and twisting his wrists as though he was dipping his hands into the paints, and the amount of paint in the buckets and the bowls was actually decreasing in accordance with the movements of his hands. 

It’s magic, she thought in amazement. He’s using magic to pull the paint to his hands and to blend the colours. Her heart was pounding now with excitement at his exquisitely controlled magical feat, but she continued to watch him in silence, unwilling to disturb his flow by commenting on what he was doing. 

He flicked his wrist at the bucket of gold paint, then dragged his fingers in a long horizontal line from the center of the vertical arch and back toward Tamaris’s end of the wall, and Tamaris finally recognized the shape that dominated most of the mural: a stylized bow and arrow, with a background of flames toward the front of the bow that blended into leaves toward the end. Enthralled by his design and by the magical way he was executing it, she wrapped her arms loosely around her knees and continued to watch as he added a silvery-white bowstring, then a purple-silvery arrowhead and purple-and-red fletching to the arrow. 

He stood back briefly to study the design before going over the golden bow and arrow again with a smattering of brown, making the bow and arrow look like a combination of wood and gold. 

He paused again and idly scratched the back of his neck, and Tamaris watched with a swelling of affection as he smeared some paint on his neck. 

He turned to face her then. “Look at me?” he said.

She lifted her eyes to his face, and her breath stalled in her chest; his beautiful amethyst eyes were bright with focus. He studied her face intently for a long second, then nodded and turned back to the wall. He flicked his wrist at the paints, then started painting over the leaves again with a slightly lighter shade of green that blended into a darker green at the edges. 

When he finished re-painting the leaves, he stood back once more and folded his arms as he surveyed his work, and Tamaris stared shamelessly at his handsome profile as he studied the wall. He carelessly flicked his wrist at the paint buckets, then flicked his fingers at the wall, and Tamaris watched as a fine blend of white and bright blue droplets appeared in misty-looking streaks near the upper edge of the bow — a fine blend that would have required painstaking care to paint by hand, but which Felassan’s magic had rendered quick and doable. His magic, which he was clearly gaining better control over with every passing day… 

Her heart throbbed again with an undeniable surge of pride. Felassan continued to flick streaks and curls of fine blue-and-white droplets across the mural, and Tamaris eventually realized that the streaks and curls looked like smoke, which made sense given the omnipresent stylized fire that dominated much of the right-hand side of the mural. 

He stepped away from the wall one more time to examine his work, then finally nodded in satisfaction. He turned to face her with a smile. “So? What do you think?”

“I love it. It’s beautiful,” she said. Then she immediately regretted her inane compliment. It sounded so paltry compared to the way her heart was pounding in her chest, as though it wanted to escape the confines of her ribcage and leap into his open hands.

He sat beside her with a satisfied sigh. “I’m glad you like it. It’s us, after all.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What?”

He gestured at the wall. “It’s us. A slow arrow dancing with flames. And a little bit of deep mushroom smoke, of course.” He smirked, then gently lifted her chin and studied her face. “I’m not convinced that I captured the shade of your eyes right, though.”

“My eyes?” she said stupidly.

“Yes, your eyes,” he said vaguely. He was still carefully examining her face. “Those green shapes on the left half of the wall.”

Those are my eyes? she thought. The green shapes he’d painted, then painstakingly repainted a second time to adjust their shade: those were meant to represent her eyes? 

He chuckled and lowered his hand. “Tell me the truth. You thought they were leaves, didn’t you?”

She stared wordlessly at him, overwhelmed by the perfection of this moment — the perfection of him. Her body was still buzzing with energy from watching him paint, and her heart was humming besottedly from the careful way he’d inspected the verdancy of her eyes. The memory of his loose and joyful movements danced across her mind as surely as his paint-slathered hands had danced across the wall, and gods, the laughter in his voice and in his smile… 

Her heart was pounding so loudly that she was shocked he couldn’t hear it. She swallowed hard and gazed at the mural once more — this mural that was them, that was her and Felassan together: a slow arrow dancing in flames, splashed boldly across the wall of this house for everyone to see. As Tamaris studied the bold jewel tones of the freshly-painted wall, it dawned on her that she had never seen any mural more beautiful than the one Felassan had just rendered with his magic and his own two hands. 

Tamaris tore her gaze away from the mural and met his bright violet eyes. “I love you,” she said.

A slow and brilliant smile lit his entire face, like a bursting of joy that rendered him even more painfully handsome than he already was. Tamaris stared gormlessly at him, her throat thickening with emotion as she took in the tenderness in his face. 

He cradled her neck in his palm. “I know, Tamaris,” he murmured.

Her heart squeezed with nerves. She swallowed hard, then smacked his chest. “You know? What do you mean, you know?”

His smile grew wider and softer at once. “I know you love me. I don’t need to hear you say it.”

Feeling slightly stung, she scoffed and tried to push him away. “You’re so fucking smug.”

He pulled her easily into his lap. “I don’t need to hear you say it, but I have been waiting for you to say it first.”

“Why?” she complained. “Why did I have to say it first?”

“I didn’t want you to feel obligated to say it back if I said it first,” he replied.

She darted him a cautious look. If he said it first? So that meant — did that mean…?

She cleared her throat and rubbed at the dent on her metal arm. “So… say it back, meaning…?”

He chuckled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It means that I love you too, felasil’ain. But I think you already knew that.” 

Her heart leapt into her throat, and she gazed silently into his glittering amethyst eyes. As usual, Felassan was right. He’d been right when he said that empty words couldn’t wipe her bitterness away. And now, in this moment, he was right when he said that mere words of love weren’t necessary. Just because he’d never said he loved her didn’t mean she didn’t know — and if she dug beneath the surface of her own stubborn insecurity, she could openly admit that she’d known all along.

She knew Felassan loved her; of course she knew, because it was infused into his every act. He made foods that he knew she would like and concocted herbal remedies for her withdrawal and her pain. He offered her massages and pulled her out of her terrible moods with his terrible jokes. He kissed her like there was nothing else he would rather do, and he fucked her like he was trying to wring every last shiver of pleasure from her body, and he was patient — almost unfathomably patient. He listened while she talked about Solas, and he’d tolerated the torture of their heated trysts until she was ready to have sex again, and he’d waited quietly while she held back the words of love that seemed to consume her more with every passing day.

No longer would she be consumed by those words. No longer would she be held hostage by them — especially not when his feelings for her were so patently obvious. 

She straddled him and cradled his paint-stained neck in her palms. “I love you,” she said huskily. “I — you’re right, okay? I wanted to say it for weeks but I felt — I don’t know, shy or something. I was being stupid.”

He squeezed her waist soothingly. “You were not being stupid. And there’s no need to explain. I told you, I don’t need you to say it.”

“Well, I need to say it,” she retorted. “And you deserve to hear it, okay? I fucking love you.”

He grinned at her, then broke into laughter. “How is it possible for someone to be affectionate and rude at once?”

She tsked and smacked his chest. “Shut the fuck up,” she said, and she kissed him. 

He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her tongue with his, and Tamaris happily capitulated to the heat of his kiss. When he broke away from her lips to laugh, she was helpless to do anything but laugh in turn.

They sat twined together on the floor, kissing and laughing and making fun of each other in husky murmured voices, and Tamaris basked shamelessly in the ample evidence of Felassan’s love. His lips pulled gently at hers and his hands moved carefully over her body, and there on the wall, looming benevolently over them in bright and brilliant strokes of colour, was the most visible sign of his love: a mural rendered by Felassan’s bare hands — a mural showing his slow arrow dancing fearlessly and boldly through the fire of her heart.

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

Was Norman Osborn ‘flanderized’?

It has been said that over the years, particularly following his resurrection, that Norman Osborn became a caricature of himself. Does this accusation carry any weight?

First things first, let’s define what the terms ‘flanderized’ and ‘flanderization’ actually mean. The most comprehensive descriptor can be found on TV Tropes. To quote an excerpt from them:

The act of taking a single (often minor) action or trait of a character within a work and exaggerating it more and more over time until it completely consumes the character. Most always, the trait/action becomes completely outlandish and it becomes their defining characteristic.

When it comes to Norman Osborn the accusations hinge upon his evolution into a villain who:

Just wants to kill Spider-Man

Is behind everything bad in Spider-Man’s life

Makes Spider-Man the point of all of his schemes

The latter point is often accompanied by referencing Norman’s original goal of taking over New York’s gangs. The idea being that originally Norman wanted to take over the gangs and then was ‘flanderized’ into being obsessed with Spider-Man.

To an extent these accusations carry merit, but not really the way detractors might think.

I’ll begin by addressing the two most obvious counterpoints.

Firstly, the idea that Norman’s vendetta and schemes against Spider-Man are ‘outlandish’ is a hollow critique in context.

Almost everything in super hero comic books is outlandish, even accepting the pseudo-science of super powers. The majority of super villains could make more money legitimately than as criminals.

Common crooks would be unlikely to go to jail if any masked vigilante beat them up. The world at large would never resemble the real world on any level if even one super powered being existed as it’d redefine what it meant to be human. Not to mention the confirmation of life on other planets, other dimensions, parallel universes, alternate timelines and the existence of deities and the afterlife.

So Norman Osborn’s schemes (the most ambitious of which was the ‘Clone Saga’) are only outlandish if we take it on face value. In context, it’s merely a large-scale version of super villain standard practices. After all, perhaps the two greatest Doc Ock stories of all time respectively involved him having secretly built an underwater base out of a James Bond movie and attempting to nuke New York City.

As for Norman ‘just’ wanting to kill Spidey, I’ve already addressed that in an earlier article.

Moving, on let’s talk about Norman’s schemes. Did they all revolve around Spider-Man? Well, even dismissing his post-OMD stories or stint as an Avenger, this is simply not true.

Osborn actually retained  his gangland aspirations in the 1990s. In fact that was his primary concern in Europe between his ‘death’ and ‘resurrection’.

When he returned to America during the ‘Clone Saga’ it was revealed (through exposition provided by the Rose) that Osborn was still very much involved in acquiring power through the criminal underworld.

Spider-Man: Made Men #1 revolved around various gangland figures vying for power. Osborn was unsurprisingly among the figures depicted.

There was some follow up to this in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #95 when the Kingpin tried to assassinate Norman as a rival gangster.

So Peter was absolutely not at the root of all  of Norman’s schemes.

Nor was he behind the majority of the bad things in Spidey’s life. Between 1997-2007 alone Norman had nothing to do with:

The Chameleon learning Spider-Man’s identity

The resurrection of Doctor Octopus

Mary Jane’s death being faked by her stalker

Spidey’s duels with Morlun

The Venom symbiote seeking out new and more violent hosts, including Mac Gargan

The destruction of Peter and MJ’s apartment and of Aunt May’s home

Peter’s failing health and death in ‘The Other’ arc

Aunt May being shot courtesy of the Kingpin

So when we look at the facts, Norman just doesn’t fit the definition of flanderization listed above. He’s far from a caricature of his early appearances. This is actually fairly uncommon in general among Silver Age characters. The vast majority of all characters who were around back then have developed at least some layers of complexity since then; if anything that’d be the opposite of flanderization if anything.

This is unquestionably the case for Norman Osborn. Through stories and issues like Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #14, ‘Revenge of the Green Goblin’, Spider-Man: Legacy of Evil #1 and ‘A Death in the Family’ Norman Osborn’s personality and psychology has been immensely expanded upon from what it was between 1964-1973.

But I do not deny the idea that Norman has changed and become more focused upon Spider-Man himself. Initially his primary goal was the conquest of the criminal underworld, through which the death of Spidey was a means to an end. But from the 1996-2005 (and arguably since Superior Spider-Man v1 #4 in 2013) Norman’s primary concern seems to have been his feud with Peter.

However, these accusations against the character seem to treat this change as unnatural. As though lazy writing simply kept exaggerating one trait of Norman’s and consequently made that the crux of the character.

In reality though this change in priorities was entirely organic. Norman grew gradually more and more frustrated with Spidey’s interference until he decided to just find out who he was and destroy him. Upon learning one another’s identities that  was when Norman and Peter’s relationship fundamentally changed. It became less about gangland aspirations but far more personal. This didn’t occur due to lazy writing across time, it was an evolution during he same run that invented Norman. And it happened around 2 years following his debut.

From there Norman was integrated into Peter’s social circle and Harry was unwittingly caught in the center of their feud. After ASM #40 every time Norman remembered he was the Goblin he wasn’t going after Spidey to rule the gangs, he was pursuing a personal vendetta against him. ‘The Death of Gwen Stacy’ in particular displayed this as Norman sought revenge for Peter giving him amnesia and for the harm he felt he’d done to Harry.

So, Norman’s priorities had fundamentally pivoted within less than 10 years of his debut. And it wasn’t due to lazy writing that ‘drifted’ him in that direction. It was an entirely believable evolution of what had began as a practical consideration and then spiraled into a personal blood feud.

Detractors though might argue that Norman became a caricature upon his return in 1996.

Even if he was manipulative and at times nasty in the Silver Age, it wasn’t nearly to the same extent as his portrayal in the 90s and beyond.

This is perfectly true. And you know what, the same can be said of the impact he had upon Peter’s life. He became far more integral to shaping Peter’s life from the 1996 onwards than he’d ever been in the Silver Age.

On these counts perhaps it’d be accurate to argue Norman became flanderized.

At which point I must ask…why is that a bad thing?

Let me give you an example that’s a bit left field.

In the 2010 animated show ‘Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated’ the classic Hanna-Barbera meddling kids got a major update. The most starkly different character though was Fred Jones. In the original and majority of Scooby-Doo shows Fred had almost always been both the de facto leader and the guy who planned the traps.

He was also the single blandest character of the main five, even excusing the pretty simple personalities of the rest of the gang.* SDMI however outright flanderized him. He went from the guy who happened to be in charge of setting the traps to someone literally obsessed with traps.

And you know what? He became immeasurably more interesting as a result. Suddenly he had a role within the group as the eccentric, the strategist and his interest in mysteries had more specificity as he actively looked for chances to ensnare would be ghosts and ghouls.

Whilst it’s often not the case, SDMI’s take on Fred proves that flanderization is not inherently  a bad thing.

This is certainly true in Norman’s case. His vendetta with Spider-Man, status as puppeteer and framing as the ultimate evil within the Spider-Man universe has been used to great effect over the years.

As a puppeteer and manipulator he was given greater scope to attack Peter and his loved ones, thereby making him a far more dangerous villain that Spidey couldn’t just knock out with a punch.

His framing as an ultimate evil also helps render Peter’s heroism in starker contrast. Everything that makes Spider-Man a true hero and champion for good is spotlighted whenever he confronts the sheer sadism and malevolence of Norman. Personally, I feel Peter Parker: Spider-Man #75 is the greatest example of this.

Call me crazy or old-fashioned but isn’t this an essential function of a villain in superhero fiction?**

And the emphasis upon the Parker/Osborn feud simply made their encounters more emotionally gripping. We all read Peter Parker’s adventures specifically for Peter’s character. We don’t want just any given person (spider powers or not) in the spotlight. We want to follow the ups and downs of his life, his relationships with his friends, family and colleagues, what job he’s working, where he lives, how he provides for himself and others, etc.

The Spider-Man story is in essence is the life of Peter Parker.

Having a villain who has a dramatic impact upon both halves of Peter’s life is more than creatively justifiable. It makes every encounter personal  and if we read Spidey because we’re personally invested  in his life then Norman’s vendetta renders him perennial relevant.

He is the villain who fundamentally tests the soul of our hero.

This isn’t to say that it wouldn’t be nice for Norman to be written with goals beyond Spider-Man. But my point is that making that his priority was never ever a problem in the first place.

In short, Norman Osborn was better  for his flanderization.

*Noticeably Fred’s character has had the most reinventions over the years when you look at wider Scooby media.

He’s been a cool douchebag in the live action films, something of a conspiracy theorist in ‘A Pup Named Scooby-Doo’, a cameraman in ‘Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island’, etc.

The lack of uniformity to his character is very likely an indicator of how simple and bland he originally was; and has largely remained since.

On a symbolic level one could even argue that Norman’s elevation to this personification of evil was appropriate for an older and adult Spider-Man. As we grow up the world in general grows darker and more sinister, presenting challenges that test our inner resolve.

A great example from modern literature would be Harry Potter. Harry ages from 11-17 across the seven novels, each of which dials up the amount of pain, cruelty and death Harry must confront.

[rosesisupposes]

also 114 + roceit?

Lover Prompts

114:  “I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden”

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pairing: Roceit

tags: post-breakup, bartender/patron, bad ex, nobinary Deceit, Deceit is named Dante, this is a lot of projection and i won’t apologize

word count: 1,815

read on ao3

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The day Roman met Dante was the worst day of his life.

Not because of them. The two events were unrelated. (Time’s just funny that way).

But the fact remains that Dante’s first words to him were “Well don’t you look like shit. What happened, did the Beast steal your Belle?”

To D’s credit, they had no idea what an effect their words would have. But that didn’t stop Roman from flipping them off as he started to cry all over their bar again.

And that left them with a choice. Ignore the crying man, as they’ve ignored so many bar patrons, passing him drinks in silence until he drinks himself into becoming a part of it. It would be a little different - most patrons aren’t in an outfit that looks straight out of a Disney coloring book. But they could do it. Or, instead, they could do this.

“Forgive me, Princey, that was uncalled for. Let me get you a drink, you tell me all about it, hmm?”

And the man dressed like a prince looked up, tears still leaking out of his eyes, and nodded. 

Dante was a professional. They prided themselves on the ability to match a drink to a mood - not always what their patrons wanted, but always what they needed. And what this face needed was maudlin, but not self-pitying. Something with some sweetness, but complexity.

“Un Vieux Carre pour le monsiuer,” they said with a smile, sliding the elegant cocktail to land in the man’s immediately open hand. 

“Merci beaucoup,” he responded, almost automatically. He took a sip, and paused, looked down into the glass, and carefully took a second, swirling it in his mouth.

“Like it? It’s a New Orleans classic,” Dante said, leaning on the bar. It was a quiet Tuesday night, they had time to chat. “Let me know what you think, or if you want, you can tell me why royalty is getting weepy in my bar tonight.”

Tears started leaking once more.

“Or we can start with your name?”

“Roman.”

“Good evening, Roman. I’m Dante. If you forgot about seeing the sign already, this is The Snake’s Den bar, and I’m the snake. Now that we’re all caught up, how’s that drink-”

“It’s my fucking boyfr- my fucking ex!” Roman cried out suddenly, interrupting the bartender’s calm voice. “That absolute- he just- and then he-!” and there were tears leaking down his face again, but hotter now, dripping with anger and not just despair. He swigged more of his drink, and kept talking, words tumbling out like a burst dam.

“We’d been together for years, and I thought it was perfect, ya know, we were both actors! We understood the struggle together! And he’d encourage me to try out for the big parts that I would have only dreamed of, but I actually got some of them! And then this- this fucking play, it’s only my childhood dream, and he says, “Oh, wouldn’t it be fun to be castmates?” and we both audition, me for the Beast and him for Gaston, but then it turns out, oh, actually, he went the FUCK behind my back and auditioned for the Beast too!”

Dante listened, nodding and humming in understanding, a perfect sounding board. “That must have been tense when he told you,” they offered sympathetically.

Roman slumped at that. “I wish. My friend texted me that the cast list had been posted and I wasn’t on it. I told him I was on the way to his place cause I needed to talk, and before I could get there, he… broke up with me. Via text message.”

In spite of themself, Dante gasped aloud. “He did not!”

“He did! Like, am I in some fuckin’ teenage melodrama?! Did I somehow date a cartoonishly terrible villain in a DCOM?!”

Dante nodded sagely. “Perhaps that’s why he didn’t go for Gaston - he wouldn’t have had to act at all.”

Roman leaned forward, eyes flashing. “And you know what’s even worse?! He’d been helping me prepare for my audition and listening to all the ideas I’ve had for how I would play the Beast, if I got the chance! But I didn’t want to make too bold a choice in the audition room, so I was holding out. And that piece of shit used my idea to get the part!”

“A scoundrel and a thief!”

“And you know the absolute worst part?”

“What?”

Roman seemed to freeze as his thought connected from brain to mouth and he processed it fully. His shoulders slumped. “I wish he’d take me back.”

Dante stood up straight. “My dear Roman emperor, let me be the first to tell you: bullshit. To quote a wise scholar: “He doesn’t deserve you! If he doesn’t treat you right by now, you’re gone.””

Roman smiled weakly. “But he- he pushed me, in my acting. He was my fire, the one who encouraged me to be ambitious and dream big and- without him… I don’t know that I’ll be able to.”

Dante nodded. They spoke softly, calmly. “Roman, I’m going to say something that might be hard to hear. His actions in these auditions? They showed that not only did he not respect this dream, but he never respected any of them. He only wanted you to succeed as far as it made him look good.”

Roman scowled. “He was an ass, but he wasn’t that, he wasn’t just a manipulative bastard, he believed in me-”

“He didn’t,” Dante interrupted. They were still calm, almost gentle. “He believed in his ability to keep pushing you to be an asset to him. Until it wasn’t beneficial anymore.”

“No-”

“And you knew this, deep down. And that part of you wasn’t taken by surprise.”

Roman stared, his face a mask of many emotions at once - confusion, heartbreak, denial, acceptance, but what won out was rage.

“You know what? Fuck you, I don’t need your psychoanalysis bullshit! Hasn’t my day been hard enough? See you fucking never!”

Dante watched him storm out, leaving the rest of his drink. A man in a prince costume, disappearing into the night. If it had been a decent narrative, it would have been raining.

But narratives aren’t often perfect.

Neither are promises made in anger.

Dante looked up to see Roman arriving back at The Snake’s Den only days later, looking a bit chagrined and only slightly less regal out of costume.

“Barkeep, I regretfully did not pay for my drink at our last encounter, and have come to rectify it.”

Dante nodded graciously. “While I appreciate your integrity, it was on the house.”

“Nevertheless, I insist that you accept payment.”

“Why don’t you have another, keep me company on slow evening?” they suggested.

Roman hesitated for all of a second before sitting down once more, the same stool as the last time.

Two months later, it was Roman’s Stool and no one dared occupy it even in his absence, unless it was truly and utterly packed.

In two months more, Roman had dragged friends to the Den too, but none became a fixture the way the actor was.

And one week after that, it was another quiet evening. A Tuesday, just as it had been before. (Time is rather funny that way).

And in one of the comfortable silences that patron and bartender often found themselves sliding into and out of with ease, Roman cleared his throat.

Dante looked up. “Yes, darling?” Their nicknames and pet names had escalated the day Roman realized he needed an honorific besides ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ and had chosen ‘dearest,’ but neither of them seemed to mind.

“My dear, I- remember what you said, that first night?”

Dante pursed their lips. “Of course I do. And I stand by it.”

Roman nodded. “I…  I know you do. I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I might lie to other people though,” they pointed out blandly. “Like the people who come in with a sob story when it’s all just their own choices. Because the boss said I can’t call people ‘sad sacks of pathos’ any more.”

“Your way with words will never fail to delight me, my Divine Comedian. I know you didn’t think it was a lie, but I didn’t fully believe you until recently.”

Dante put down their cleaning cloth and leaned in near their friend. “May I be so bold as to ask what changed?”

“So this will sound a little melodramatic-”

“You? Dramatic? Perish the thought.”

“Fuck you too, my sweet serpent.”

Dante blew a kiss and fluttered their eyelashes at him. “Pardon me, I interrupted you, you were saying?”

Roman shifted in his seat, adjusting without meeting Dante’s eyes. “I didn’t want to believe you, that that bastard was never cheering me on for my sake alone. Because- I said he was my fire, and I meant it. He was determined, and ambitious, and I thought that him urging me on meant that I was sharing in it. He was burning red, and that was what I wanted to be, and I thought I could be an equal flame where we burned stronger together.”

Dante nodded, humming quietly in understanding without interrupting. 

“But instead, I was just the candle that helped him burn brighter while slowly melting away. I was always so exhilarated with him, excited but then so exhausted. I always wanted to be more, or wanted to be what he wanted, at least. And he always wanted more. I tried and tried and I could never be enough because he just… he drained me.” A single tear leaked out and courses down Roman’s tan cheek. 

Dante reached over and wrapped their hand around his, and squeezed. “Love could look like that, could look like encouragement and ambition. But I don’t think that’s what you had, Ro.”

Roman blinked up at them. Both realized it was the first nickname based on their actual name that either had used. “So I wasn’t just a fool to think he really meant it?”

“Of course not, sweetheart. He was the fool, to not fully appreciate you.”

The lights of the bar shone through tawny bottles of liquor and glinted off the brass trappings, bathing them in a warm glow. Roman looked up at Dante, and he could have sworn they were absorbing the light and releasing it anew, their golden skin practically incandescent. And their smile, softening as they looked at Roman, focused on brushing away the dampness from his face, a careful and doting look that they never directed at their other friends.

Roman swallowed hard. “Dante, darling?”

They met his eyes, face lighting with a smile that rivaled the sun. “Yes, Roman?”

“I think I know what love looks like, now.”

“And what’s that?”

Roman rose up to Dante’s eye level, cupping their cheek in his hand. “It’s golden,” he breathed out, before their lips met.

[lordeasriel]

I really care about your opinion, how do you feel about the bbc show and the way it's going?

I feel like before I give my take, I need to say that I understand the show is its own thing, and while I do wish they did a better job adapting certain things, I understand that sometimes there is a need for radical change or cut, especially when your budget is not super high (which HDM does have a lot of money into it, still is not a super big budget production, so they have to worry about these things). And I do enjoy many things about the show, but my overall vibe is mixed, to be honest. I’m stating this now because people often question whether I like the show or not, becaus I do criticise it a lot, and I simply have a critic view of the things I like, which is why I discuss them a lot and it can be overwhelming.

My main issues with the show are these 3 things: (which I’ll put under the cut because this got a bit longer than I wanted to lmao sorry)

Lack of worldbuilding and loose lore: I’ve been talking about this since day one, and this mostly applies to season 1 because I can’t judge season 2 yet because it’s not fully aired yet, but the show suffers from lack of worldbuilding, especially in Lyra’s world, which is the world that sets everything in motion. I still dislike the fact they introduced Will mid-NL, I don’t think he needed all those episodes to establish something that easily could’ve been done in S2 and because they gave TSK a lot of time, other parts of Lyra’s world suffered considerably, mainly the witches and the Magisterium.

The show doesn’t really expand on those two groups, especially, and I think that’s not good, especially the Magisterium (which they have over simplified by making it one big baddie, or so it seems at least, not to mention that implying a single leader for them practically ruins Marcel Delamare’s arc in TBOD and I’m very mad about that lmao). A lot of the Magisterium plot has that infighting aspect, which creates tension on their side as well as against their enemies, but the show doesn’t really explore that or the nuances of the Church, and they also don’t explore how varied the witches are, and I feel like this is a serious mistake. (The portrayal of the witches is by far my least favourite thing in the show, if I’m being honest).

Dull parallel world (and lack of daemons): this ties a bit with the worldbuilding aspect, but this is mainly about design choices. I think the show doesn’t make Lyra’s world as unique as it should be. On its own the world looks pretty and the outfits of most of the cast are great, but when you realise that Will’s world is intertwined with that, you don’t really feel like these two worlds are vastly different.

There is an odd situation in which Marisa’s fashion feels 30s/40s, but most of the men from her social circle (not fair to compare with the gyptians) just wear plain suits and they look much more modern. And while I get that they went for a timeless vibes, with different eras and styles, Lyra’s world feels like a caricature and it doesn’t feel believable. The colour palette is mostly the same for both worlds (even in s2, it’s hard to tell much of the difference because either the scenes are indoors or at night.) This, paired with the lack of daemons (which has been discussed many times in the fandom) kinda bums me out.

Marisa’s oversimplification: I’m mentioning Marisa, specifically, because she is the one that suffers the most due to this writing issues, but other characters like Lord Asriel, MacPhail, the general collective of the Witches, they all suffer from the writing trying to take away the nuances of them and make them flatter than in the book. Marisa is the worst because without her complexity and her flaws, she simply gets dull and boring and flavourless, and it’s kinda what has been happening in the show in my opinion. All she does is weep and she has no strength that doesn’t rely on a random fit of rage that dies out and she gets upset. There’s some great moments, like when she mimics the Monkey, but most of the time she’s just a shadow of who she is supposed to be.

The show tries really hard to make her a Scorned Mother - right from the get go, they try to makes us see how she wants Lyra, how she struggles with her “bad nature” and how that affects their relationship. There is this lingering implication that Lyra was taken from her against her wishes; they make it seem like being a mother to Lyra is her driving force, the only reason why she seeks power and influence. And that is the opposite of Book! Marisa, who is a force of nature, ruthless and ambitious, with not an ounce of maternal instinct.

She does eventually decide to help Lyra, instead of harming her, but even that action comes from a narcisistic place: Lyra is to her a possession, something that belongs to her, and that she wants to preserve. The show just handles her badly, falling into overused, boring tropes that struck far from the book version.

These are usually my main complaints about the show, and they upset me every episode to the point I’m practically ignoring them now lmao The show does a lot of good things too, making Will less of a prick, restoring Lyra’s personality from the first book into S2 Lyra (so far, please keep it that way), Mary is looking great too. They have mostly a great cast, and they did improve the daemons this season (except uh, there are far less daemons to show because of the other worlds - and the Ruta Skadi daemon change pisses me off tbh).

They do have a lot of interest in the show, but the writing (the main issue to me) feels clunky and childish, with the show toning down most of the themes that make His Dark Materials so special, especially to me (which frankly I expected them to do, but it still stings a bit). They make the Magisterium a single bad entity that feels more Authoritarian-Fascist, than a theocracy (even if they sneak in the religious symbols and rituals and garments, it’s just not a good portrayal, it’s very tame and shy); and they try to justify Marisa’s actions (especially in current interviews, there’s lots of talk about how her background will play in the show to “explain why she is the way she is”). The fact the Magisterium is portrayed as pure evil makes it looks less familiar than it should be, and therefore they don’t look scary, they seem like a caricature, a joke.

A lot of the essence of the characters get lost, and the core message of the story too, like when Iorek and the Gyptians tell Lyra she can be one of them, to support her lack of “proper family”, when that is the opposite of the books message. It doesn’t make sense for them to change that, other than maybe Jack Thorne wanted to because it makes the story feels less hopeless, but it’s why he fails to adapt these character - he doesn’t capture the essence, he tries to write these character with gaps in them.

However, the thing that annoys me the most is how they portray Asriel. It’s just... it’s bad. Really bad, which is a shame cause James is talented as fuck, but he had little time to film for season 1, and then they portrayed him very poorly. That scene when he addresses Roger in episode 7 is ridiculous, Asriel would never behave that way; there was relief in him finding Roger was there too, yes, but not to that extent and not in such a cringe way. Asriel is not deranged or irrational, he is a man on a mission, and Roger was a tool (there is no pleasure in Asriel taking his life and no excuses - it needed to be done and he did it); they just needed him to sound creepy in the show for whatever reason.

I hated how they handled the bridge scene for Asriel, Lyra and Marisa, but that’s long and complicated for me to explain here. In S2, there has been some mentions of him so far, including the implication he might have ruined Cittàgazze himself and I frankly don’t understand where did they get that idea. But the cherry on the top was Thorold telling Marisa that Asriel was gonna kill Lyra and that’s just-- that’s so dumb. That’s genuinely dumb writing, because Thorold knows Lyra followed Asriel to the mountain, and while I do believe Asriel would have killed Lyra if Roger wasn’t there, there is no way Thorold should know or consider that Asriel was gonna hurt Lyra, because Roger was there. In fact, Thorold’s interactions with Asriel in episode 8 already disprove this, so either Thorold was lying in S2 for the sake of, I don’t know, chaos or whatever, or the person who wrote this was a five-star, solid gold, fucking moron.

I’m not gonna mention the lost episode because that was no one’s fault, but the fact that they discarded an episode that all information we have on imply that it was important to set up the backstory of the angels and the city, it’s... concerning. It means they wrote something parallel that should’ve been woven into the season.

The truth is, I still watch the show on Sundays, and I still like some stuff they do (especially Mary’s stuff, so far), and despite me slandering the show per your request anon lol (cause unfortunately my honest opinion is mixed, I just don’t try to overfocus on the negative on Tumblr, I mostly talk about it on discord or private), I do think anyone who has read the books should watch the show.

For me, personally, everything I love about HDM is barely on the show - complex characters, the philosophy, the oppression by religion, the interesting world - and the vibe I get is that they’re adapting a coming-of-age love story, which is the last and - being fully honest - the least important message these books give us, but unfortunately they were set to making a family show from the start, and my expectations were high and unmatched, and a family is what we’re getting: toned down, cute, pretty visuals and soulless (heh, pun intended), philosophically speaking. I expect a certain pattern going into S3, but I always like to hold out hope that they will hire better writers (apparently Jack Thorne already wrote 4 scripts, so there you go lmao), and try to give HDM the adaptation it deserves. The truth is, if you’re a picky, canon reliant person like I am, the show might be a struggle, but if you just like the story for the teen romance, or if you don’t care about overthinking a show/book, then most people can have a good time with it.

[synoxshots]

OC list

Yo! I’ve finished the Big Update to my oc page, filling in nearly all the characters in my legacy and including my two new Sith babies. I’m also cross-posting here under the cut in case it’s easier/because I’m extra. 

Edited and up to date as of September 2020.

Universe notes: 

Main universe has Yalla’ra as the Outlander/Alliance Commander, all fit into that barring Iphedarius

Iphedarius is my dark side Outlander/Commander AU - as I couldn’t see her playing nicely enough to fit in to an Alliance that wasn’t her own.

Qiren also has an AU where she is the Outlander and the Alliance doesn’t side with either the Republic or Empire. In Yalla’ra’s universe Ticcer is the story-canon smuggler, Qiren funds the Star Fortress resistances before formally joining the Alliance.

Yalla’ra

Class: Jedi Knight

Type: Guardian

Species: Miraluka

Born: 12 BTC

Born on the Miraluka homeworld of Alpheridies, Yalla'ra's force talents were clear from a young age and led her to join the Jedi Order. She quickly rose to prominence whilst learning under Master Orgus Dinn, but despite her triumphs she was far from the ideal Jedi – struggling to control her emotions, being too ambitious, and being prone to acting rashly. After joining the Tol Braga's strike team to face the Emperor, she was haunted by her failure and determined to destroy the Emperor no matter what the cost. Despite her success, the dark path she led strained her relationship with the Jedi Council, who denied her the rank of master despite her achievements.

Her path changes after meeting the ghost of Orgus Dinn on Rishi, who helps her realise she's lost perspective of what a Jedi should really be. She regains her memories of her time being possessed by the Emperor and is overwhelmed with guilt – for her actions then, but also before and since. As Alliance Commander she follows the path of the light, being determined to have a positive impact on the galaxy by first and foremost helping its citizens.

Ticcer

Class: Smuggler

Type: Scoundrel

Species: Mirialan

Born: 14 BTC

Ticcer was just a teenager when the Sacking of Coruscant happened, orphaning him and his sister and destroying their home. He has to start doing all he can to get by – running small cons, pickpocketing, stealing speeders – all sorts of petty crime that is part of daily life in Coruscant's underworld. He has a natural charm which he uses to swindle as many people as he can, and he also learns to fight dirty to get by.

He hates the Empire for destroying what his life might have been, but is apathetic towards the Republic because they were never there for him and his sister in their time of need. When his sister dies in the crossfire of a fight, he ends up becoming more ruthless and selfish, taking on an attitude of him against the world.

His life as a smuggler starts when a con gets a bit too big on him, leading to him killing the guy in self defence and running off with his ship filled with guns to be delivered offworld. Ticcer happily obliges and falls in love with the life he finds, first falling in with a smuggling crew and later deciding to go out on his own.

Ruka’ii

Class: Jedi Consular

Type: Sage

Species: Human

Born: 10 BTC

Ruka'ii is devoted to the force, always believing she is following in the path it has laid out for her and trusting in it to guide her actions. She believes her role as a Jedi is to serve others and the Republic, and as such completes her missions without complaint to the burdens placed upon her.

She always seeks to understand the people she meets and their motivations, and would much rather use her words than resort to combat. She believes in justice and redemption, willing to give her enemies a second chance wherever possible. She is also unafraid to stand up to her allies when she believes their choices are leading to a dark path, even when this may be a hindrance to their objectives. She has a talent for diplomacy and negotiating, which leads to her being chosen to work with the Rift Alliance and gaining the title of master despite her young age.

She is a scholar with interests in history and archaeology, the complexities of the force, and other cultures throughout the galaxy. When she is not away on a mission, she is often to be found studying in the archives on Tython and maintaining contact with her allies from her travels.

Qiren Alto

Class: Smuggler

Type: Gunslinger

Species: Human

Born: 15 BTC

When Qiren Alto started smuggling she thought she'd be all about the money, but somewhere along the line she became the person that stands up from the little guy. Her and her crew still get a good share, but she likes to steal from the rich and give it to the poor – a bit of direct action against the political machines of the galaxy. She believes in loyalty and is happy to help a friend out, but still won't hesitate to take revenge when she's betrayed or someone takes a shot at her reputation. Overall she sees herself as one of the good guys, even if sometimes she's doing the right thing for the wrong reasons or vice versa.

She's a massive flirt, not caring if they're Empress of the Sith or Grandmaster of the Jedi Order, she'll still give them the eye. She's snarky and cocky and aware of her skills, charms, and good looks – and she likes to bring that up as well. She'll find the funny side in even the most serious of situations and make everyone – companions and enemies – roll their eyes. She likes to look the part as well, and believes a good hat and a good jacket are two of the most important things a smuggler should have.

Jayma Oli

Class: Bounty Hunter

Type: Powertech

Species: Human Cyborg

Born: 16 BTC

Growing up on Nar Shaddaa, the underworld was just a way of life for Jayma Oli from a young age. Her parents owned a popular cantina on the city planet, but it was more of a front for the shadier business dealings that went on behind the scenes. Jayma followed in the family profession as soon as she was old enough to hold a blaster, gaining a reputation as an enforcer despite her youth and small stature.

Growing up around spacers gave Jayma an unshakeable wish to travel the galaxy however, and to see the sights she'd heard about in all their stories. When she turned 18 she left her home to live that dream, making a living as a hired gun and soon finding a place for her talents with a smuggling crew. She is professional in her role, following her orders to the letter, and though she doesn't kill for the sake of it she is always determined to defend her honour. Money is her prime motivator over any political beliefs: she has no great love for either the Republic or the Empire, but often finds herself working with the Empire as they offer her the best deals.

Iphedarius

Class: Sith Warrior

Type: Marauder

Species: Sith Pureblood

Born: 14 BTC

Iphedarius was born to an ancient Sith bloodline, and taught from an early age to value and pursue power above all else. As the fifth of six children she faced less pressure from her parents to provide further heirs, and was able to focus fully on her Sith training. She proved powerful in the force, fully giving in to the dark side and encouraging Sith values amongst her companions, and rose to become one of the most powerful Sith in the galaxy in her role as Emperor's Wrath.

She tried to remain faithful to the Emperor for as long as possible, though eventually his atrocities could no longer be ignored and she sided with Darth Marr for his expedition into Wild Space. When Valkorion took up residence in her head, she was at first willing to use his power but realised by doing so she would never have true control. After his defeat she seized the opportunity to become Empress, later returning to become Empire's Wrath after the destruction of the Eternal Fleet.

Xianen

Class: Sith Inquisitor

Type: Assassin

Species: Twi’lek

Born: 12 BTC

Xianen was part of a group of Jedi younglings travelling to an enclave when their ship was attacked by the Sith and all non-humans shunted into slavery, though watched carefully for evidence of their force abilities. Initially she resolves to stay true to the Jedi way and attempts to escape from slavery numerous times with varying levels of success, but over time the punishment she is given breaks her resolve and she gives herself fully to the dark side of the force. She is bitter and angry, vowing revenge against the weak Jedi Order and wishing to show them the full force of the dark side. This delights the Sith, and she is duly sent to Korriban to receive full training.

Emyr Devand

Class: Sith Warrior

Type: Juggernaut

Species: Human

Born: 13 BTC

Emyr Devand was born on Ziost, his parents being active members of the Ziost Liberation Front. His parents did their best to keep their terrorist activities a secret, though drip-fed him some of their ideas and also encouraged him to hide his force-sensitivity, not wanting him to become a Sith. However, when Emyr was nine his parents were uncovered as traitors and sent to prison, leaving him to be raised by his staunchly pro-Empire grandparents.

His grandparents were delighted to discover his force-sensitivity, seeing it as a matter of pride when they sent him off to the Sith academy and a chance to dispel the family shame caused by his parents. He arrives at the academy with much to prove and relishes the chance to finally learn to use his force powers, but his parents have had enough of an influence that he finds himself struggling to give himself truly to the full ideals of the Sith.

Onyxus Vai

Class: Bounty Hunter

Type: Mercenary

Species: Rattataki

Born: 20 BTC

Born on Rattatak but fed up with the planet's warring ways, Onyxus always wished to leave his homeworld behind and seek his fame and fortune in the wider galaxy. His size, physicality, and fighting skills honed on his planet soon helped him to find freelance work for many gangs and spacers in the years that followed. However, despite appearances and his obvious ability, away from the job he is a relaxed, quiet character and known by his friends to be a gentle giant.

Over time as a freelancer, he finds himself repeatedly bumping into the pirate crew of Paxton Rall, the two saving each other several times on their travels before deciding it will save them a lot of time if Onyxus simply joins his crew. The two form a close friendship and later romance, travelling the galaxy and living the pirate lifestyle. Onyxus joins the Great Hunt as part of a harebrained scheme cooked up by the crew after his birthday celebrations, another of their wild plans for fame and adventure. It comes as something of a surprise when he gets accepted, but he soon makes a name for himself as a successful bounty hunter.

Leire Santo

Class: Trooper

Type: Commando

Species: Human

Born: 15 BTC

The child of two Republic military heroes, Leire Santo was always destined to follow in her parents' footsteps. After excelling during her time in a military academy and impressing in early postings, she was scouted to join the elite Havoc Squad. Despite a self-confidence that could at times border on arrogance, the shock of having to suddenly take upon a position of leadership proved to be the making of her. She believes in doing the right thing and never wants to stoop to the Empire's level, even when at times it contradicts the strict letter of the orders given.

Though her injuries cause her to step back from active duty during the war against Zakuul, her leadership skills and tactical insight make her a key member of the Eternal Alliance. As the Alliance formally becomes part of the Republic following the destruction of the Eternal Fleet, Leire is elected as the senator for Odessen.

Ank’aeto’sonu

Class: Jedi Knight

Type: Sentinel 

Species: Chiss

Born: 18 BTC

Ank'aeto'sonu - more often known as Kaetos or Kaet - was born on Csilla, a force-sensitive child in a society that shunned force users. Loving their child dearly and wanting a future where they wouldn't be forced into hiding, when Kaetos reached adulthood their parents paid for a series of transports to a Republic core world where they could seek out the Jedi.

Kaetos arrived on Corellia in the days following the Treaty of Coruscant when tensions were still high, and so was initially treated with high suspicion on their meeting with Republic forces. However, their persistence paid off when meeting Jedi Master Tol Braga, and they soon found themself joining the Order as a padawan learner. With a lot of catching up to do, they find their force training both frustrating and hugely rewarding, and in the Jedi Order finally feeling like they have a place where they belong.

[thekoshertribble]

Women of Star Trek #20 “Mirror, Mirror” Marlena Moreau

“Mirror, Mirror,” the first Star Trek episode to feature the Mirrorverse, introduces us to some truly nefarious characters: the mirror counterparts of Sulu and Chekhov are pretty frightening, and even though Spock appears to be good at the end of the episode he is still quite intimidating. However, we are also introduced to a new character who is arguably just as formidable, and more complex: Lt. Marlena Moreau, the “captain’s woman.”

Marlena might be the most dangerous person on the ISS Enterprise, next to the captain. She is the only person besides Kirk to have access to the Tantalus field - she uses it to spy on prime-universe-Kirk kill mirrorSulu’s henchmen - and she can use it without the captain’s knowledge. She could easily assassinate anyone on board, including the captain. (So why not just kill him? Killing the captain would likely open up a power vacuum with various factions of officers and crew fighting for the position. It’s too risky a move to take.) 

There are a lot of questions I have about this character. Yes, she gets a lot of screentime and plenty of dialogue with Kirk but we’re still left with some big questions, two of which I’ll try to address:

1) What is a “captain’s woman” anyway, and

2) What is her endgame? (Why does she kill Sulu’s henchmen and why did she want to go to the prime Universe?)

So let’s begin. We first meet Lt. Moreau in mirrorKirk’s quarters. A very confused primeKirk finds her sleeping on his counterpart’s bed. She wakes, and seeing Kirk return, gets them some drinks to chat over. “We had quite a time in the chem lab picking up after the storm,” she says. From this first line, and from her blue uniform, we can assume that she is a science officer specializing in chemistry, but we don’t get any more details. (What does she do in the “chem lab?” Chemical weapons? It’s the mirror universe so that sort of thing is plausible.)

Anyway, Marlena doesn’t seem too focused on that aspect of her career. In her later confrontation with Kirk, after he refuses her advances, she makes her intentions clear: “I’ve been a captain’s woman and I like it. I’ll be one again if I have to go through every officer in the ‘Fleet.” She feels that mirrorKirk hasn’t given her enough attention and respect, and therefore wants to transfer to another ship. “On the Enterprise, I am humiliated. On another ship, I can hunt fresh game.” Marlena appears to have two different roles on the Enterprise. First, she is a science officer (possibly working on chemical weapons). This is her official role, but she also appears to have a secondary, unofficial yet equally significant role, that of the “captain’s woman.” I think this role is similar to that of the crewmen who ally themselves with certain officers onboard as “henchmen.” It’s probably not on their official records, but it is just as important in their day-to-day life on the ship. There are likely numerous women or men in Starfleet who act as parmours/concubines to other officers or crewmembers. Like the “henchmen,” these paramours act as free agents, partnering with officers of their choosing for status and security. (And of course, they can switch sides if the balance of power shifts.) By this logic, Marlena is one of the most powerful individuals on the ISS Enterprise, and not just because of her access to the Tantalus Field. As the Captain’s Woman she is granted a high degree of respect and security; anyone who threatens her risks incurring the Captain’s wrath. 

Marlena clearly sees her role as the Captain’s Woman as an active partnership. Not simply satisfied with being a paramour, she is invested in Kirk’s rise to power, offering her own advice and observations. In her first conversation with primeKirk, she quickly reminds him of her part in this relationship:

MARLENA: You're still in trouble with Starfleet Command. What you've got in mind this time is beyond me. You're scheming, of course. The Halkans have something you want, or, is it all some clever means to advance you to the Admiralty? Kirk. The Cabinet itself? KIRK: Further than that, if I'm successful. MARLENA: Really? Well, you must know what you're doing. You always do. If I'm to be the woman of a Caesar, can't I know what you're up to?

Marlena sees Kirk as an ambitious and cunning individual, slowly and ruthlessly advancing his career; so why not join him on his way up the blood-stained ladder? And why not give him some tips? When Spock presents Kirk with the ultimatum, Marlena has this to say:

MARLENA: Let's drink a toast to Spock, The only man aboard with the decency to warn you, and he'll die for it. They'll never find another man like him.

KIRK: I don't intend to kill him.

MARLENA: Are you going to act against the Halkans before the deadline?

KIRK: No, but I'll avoid killing Spock.

MARLENA: Just get him out of the way, he and his men.

KIRK: I'll get out of his way.

MARLENA: Shall I activate the Tantalus field? You'll at least want to monitor him, won't you?

Marlena admits she doesn’t like the Tantalus field, but she suggests Kirk use it to protect himself from his imminent execution. She regards it as a necessary evil. (She uses it on Sulu’s henchmen, but the motivation behind this particular act is a bit different, but we’ll tackle that later.) Marlena is clearly active in this relationship, and she expects the same from her Captain. Unfortunately, it appears that he hasn’t been keeping up his part of the bargain, at least according to Marlena. We don’t get a lot of info on why MirrorKirk and Marlena are having problems, but this line is indicative: “I'm afraid I'm a little out of practice. Maybe that's what happened to us? It's very hard for a working officer to shine as a woman every minute, and you demand perfection.” Kirk and Marlena are officers, outside of their relationship. Marlena tries to put the blame on herself, but it’s most likely Kirk who is neglecting to pay attention to her. This continual neglect culminates when primeKirk rejects her sexual advances, and she reaches a breaking point: 

KIRK: I've got to go.

MARLENA: Ship's business? An important task on the crew deck? Well, I guess it's over. 

To her surprise, PrimeKirk ultimately assures her that she is still the Captain’s Woman, “until he says you’re not,” and leaves her to ruminate on why her captain is suddenly acting like a stranger...

...Which takes us to the second big question: what is Marlena’s ultimate objection? Why did she save primeKirk and his crew, and why did she want to go with them, back to their universe? I have two contrasting theories:

Theory #1: Marlena is seeking security. I’ve illustrated above what I think the “captain’s woman” role is, but the episode doesn’t explain why Marlena is so adamant about being one. Does she just want status of being a partner to powerful officers in the imperial fleet, or is there more to the story? As a Captain’s Woman, Marlena is one of the most powerful and most secure individuals on the ship. She’s almost untouchable. She’s a smart woman, but she’s living in a world that values physical violence, and her combat skills appear to be lacking. (For example, PrimeUhura disarms her almost immediately.) So maybe Marlena is ultimately looking for ways to become powerful (i.e. more secure) without being a skilled fighter. Why be a good fighter when you can “partner” with one instead? This is not to say that mirrorKirk is a safe partner - he’s not, he’s most likely abusive, mentally and/or physically. We see evidence of this in Marlena’s “breakup” with primeKirk. She has to ask him if she still has her rank after threatening to leave: “I’ve got my rank - don’t I?” There’s a lining of fear in her voice, she’s afraid of some kind of retribution, physical or otherwise. She’s confused by primeKirk’s belief in her abilities, and by his gentleness: “It's been a long time since you've kissed me like that. You're a stranger. Mercy to the Halkans, mercy to Spock, to me.” If Marlena’s objective is to get herself to a place of relative safety, then the discovery of a less violent parallel universe would completely change her plans. Like the Tantalus Field, being a “captain’s woman” is a necessary evil, the best survival tactic in a violent universe. 

Theory #2: Crack Theory! Marlena is seeking glory. Okay, this is a bit more far fetched but hear me out. Remember the conversation primeKirk had with her about the Tantalus field:

Marlena: Now, I always thought that was funny, The great, powerful Captain Kirk who owes everything to some unknown alien scientist and a plundered laboratory.

KIRK: Well, if you don't take advantage of your opportunities

MARLENA: You don't rise to the command of a starship or even higher.

MirrorKirk would not be as successful as he is without the Tantalus Field, a device he found by accident, and then exploited. What if Marlena is doing something similar, with her discovery of the prime Universe? Remember, Marlena is a scientist. She could study the process Scotty developed to bridge between the two universes, combined with the ion storm phenomenon. Marlena might have wanted to travel to the prime Universe with the prime Crew, (pretending she wanted to go there to be secure like in theory 1), in order to study them and assess their weak points. With this information, she could be a one-woman vanguard leading the Empire to conquer the prime Universe. 

Like she said, you can’t rise to the top unless you seize opportunities. 

Up Next: The Apple

[spectral-musette]

The Worthy Partner

Set in an AU in which Duchess Satine Kryze asks Obi-Wan Kenobi to stay on Mandalore with her (before TPM). The couple attends an official function on Satine’s homeworld a few months after their marriage.

~ 3000 words

I used a little Mando’a (based on the dictionary at Mandoa.org), but the meanings of the words and phrases hopefully should be clear from the context. A couple of endnotes are included as intended translation notes in case I messed up, though.

Cross-posted on AO3

(Written when I got carried away working on a sketch of the scenario.)

*     *     *     *     *

           “How are you enjoying the meal?”

           Satine glared down her officious host, the Minister of Arts and Culture of Kalevala, but Obi-Wan merely nodded. “Your spices are extremely flavorful,” he complimented.

           “Be sure to try the tiingilar with the sauce.”

           He obligingly took a spoonful from the serving dish onto his plate. Satine tried to cast a warning glance in his direction and refilled his goblet with the cold ulik milk from the pitcher.

           She watched his face turn crimson as he tried a bite, but he smiled pleasantly. “Thank you for pointing it out.”

           He did, however, empty his goblet quickly.

           “Are you all right?” she whispered, leaning close as the Minister moved to the next table of dignitaries. “That stuff will peel the paint off a starship hull.”

           “No harm done. Hazing the Offworlder is to be expected, isn’t it?”

           She let out a hiss of disapproval. “They’re deliberately trying to humiliate you.”

           “Let them. I’ve had far less palatable meals than overspiced Mandalorian cuisine.” He dipped his bread into the offending sauce and smiled his most charming smile at their host, who was glancing over his shoulder surreptitiously to observe Obi-Wan’s response to the spicy delicacy.

           “I know. I’ve eaten Qui-Gon’s cooking too.”

           A wistful shadow passed over Obi-Wan’s handsome countenance, and they gripped each other’s hands under the table.

           “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I miss him too. He promised to visit soon.”

           “No doubt the Council is keeping him busy.”

           Though she hadn’t managed to get him to talk about it, she suspected that there were moments when Obi-Wan felt miserably homesick, not just for his former Master, but all his friends and mentors and for the community of the Jedi Temple. This was not the time to try to discuss it, though. “Just don’t let the Minister goad you into gulping the tihaar,” she warned, changing the subject and trying to distract him from falling into introspective melancholy.

           “Don’t think I can stomach it?”

           “No, I just hate the stuff, and I don’t want to taste it on you later.”

           “Fair enough,” he replied, laughing softly and squeezing her hand before releasing it.

           Perhaps not that much later, depending on how long etiquette demanded they remain at the Minister’s gala. She and Obi-Wan had been husband and wife for a few months now, and the touch of his hand and light of a smile in his eyes still made her heart quicken – as she happily suspected they always would.

           The Minister stood from his table, raising his arms to announce his intention to address the guests. The room quieted as everyone put down their flatware to listen attentively.

           “Before dessert is served, I wonder if the Duchess would be so kind as to grace our company with the performance of a traditional dance.”

           The orchestra struck up the opening measures of a familiar tune, and Satine’s heart sank.

           Ruusaanyc Riduur, the Worthy Partner.

           She hated this dance. She remembered learning it as a girl, practicing with her sister until they knew the complex steps by heart. But the childhood memories were overshadowed by the few times she had been asked to dance it publicly with a would-be suitor, under her father’s watchful gaze. The young warriors who’d courted her in those not-so-distant days had been ambitious, vicious men, interested only in clan alliances and winning her father’s favor. And after her father’s death…

           For a moment, the orchestra seemed to thin to a badly tuned mandoviol drunkenly meandering through the notes, the elegant hall to dim to the ramshackle camp where she’d once been held prisoner by a warlord with aspirations bigger than his arsenal, a boy no older than herself, stinking of tihaar as he held her by the chin.

           You might be dar’manda, but you’re almost pretty enough for it not to matter. Bet your clan would be grateful if I’d lower myself to marry you.

           Satine tried to banish the unpleasant memory as well as the sickening one of the Protectors’ retaliation when they had rescued her shortly thereafter. She took a deep breath, rallying her wits to counter the Minister’s latest onslaught of social warfare.

           “Perhaps,” he pressed, taking advantage of her brief silence, “if your consort is not familiar with the steps, I might find you another partner.”

           Before she could voice her outrage at the suggestion that a married woman perform this particular dance at an official function with anyone but her own spouse, Obi-Wan stood, grasping her hand and leading her from the table to the open floor at the center of the hall.

           For a moment she thought he was leading her out, refusing to put up with further insult – the implication was plain, that if her consort did not participate in the traditional dance, he was not a worthy partner – but he stopped in front of the Minister’s table.

           “Don’t try to bluff your way through this,” she warned quietly, a heavy knot of dread in her stomach. Performing it badly might be worse than refusing to participate.

           “I won’t,” he promised, the hint of a dimple creasing his cheek. “Trust me.”

           Of course, she always did.

           And he might’ve been a little stiff and nervous, held her hands a little too tightly, but he trod the steps precisely, even catching the subtle shift in the way they clasped their hands to indicate that the dancers were vowed to each other rather than merely courting.

           “How…” she breathed in wonderment when he briefly grasped her close.

           “In the usual way. Took lessons.” He broke his concentration a moment to favor her with a smile, and she cursed his dimples for almost making her trip. “I’d hoped to surprise you under rather better circumstances.”

           “I didn’t know you could dance at all,” she confessed.

           “How do you suppose they start teaching us saber forms in the Temple? Let a bunch of toddlers loose with laser swords?”

           “When you put it like that…”

           More couples began to fill the floor, and Obi-Wan relaxed a little as they were no longer the center of attention.

           Satine took a moment to admire him, graceful and lithe as he gained confidence in the movements of the dance. Most days he wore his simplified version of the Royal Guard’s uniform, but she’d managed to coax him into a few bits of finery for the occasion – please don’t make it easier for them to pretend to mistake you for my bodyguard this time. He looked very dashing in a tunic of fine-spun silk instead of his preferred coarse linen, with a smart half cape over one shoulder, a pair of bright silver vambraces, and a wide belt of intricately tooled leather.

           She was also feeling rather grateful for his cool temper under the current trying circumstances. Her Mandalorian disposition was apt to spit fire when delivered insults and slights. He tolerated them with such grace that it left her enemies baffled most of the time. He had a way of making them aware that he was on to their game and refusing to engage in it. She knew some of them were foolish enough to doubt his courage, but the wiser ones never did; if a Mandalorian worth his beskar knew anything at all, it was how to size up a fellow warrior.

           And that was the final irony of her choice of a husband: she’s sworn she’d never marry a warrior, and yet here he was. He might not wear the beskar’gam, he certainly didn’t share certain hard-headed Mando perspectives, and she knew that he abhorred violence in his heart, but he still dealt it out with skill and cunning when he had no other choice. Her eyes went to the lightsaber at his belt, and she thought of the would-be assassin he’d apprehended mere weeks ago, now in custody on Coruscant waiting for his trial. Someday, she hoped, that last resort would stop being necessary quite so often.

           The music slowed to a halt, and Obi-Wan brought her hand to his lips, bestowing a light, courtly kiss on her knuckles as he met her gaze. He could be difficult to read sometimes, so she always felt a swell of affection when he let her see his heart in his eyes: his eagerness to please and impress her, his unabashed devotion, and the ember-glow of his desire, no doubt brightly mirrored in her own eyes. They would both be very glad indeed to leave the party.

           “I’m sorry your plan was spoiled,” she said, smiling at the charming thought of him plotting a romantic setting for her, with music and dancing.

           “You were surprised,” he conceded, grinning.

           “Very pleasantly. I admit it’s not a favorite of mine, so perhaps it’s better this way,” she said, lacing their fingers together as they headed back to their table. The crowd on the dance floor was moving slowly, a particularly large man Satine recognized as one of the Minister’s aides blocking their path. He glanced over his shoulder at them, and turned to give her a polite nod.

           “Dal’alor.[i]”

           Apparently someone had been serving the tihaar already, judging from the fumes on his breath and his odd choice of the rather archaic Mando’a translation of her title. She decided not to take issue with the way his slurred speech had shifted dal towards dar –“former” – changing the honorific into a rather ominious threat of deposition. However, it did put her on edge.

           “Gar veriduur redalur jate,[ii]” he continued.

           Satine froze.

           It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard be’jetii veriduur – Jedi’s whore – flung at her before, but she hadn’t been expecting such crass invective in this ostensibly civilized setting, least of all under the guise of a compliment.

           “Perhaps your Mando’a is rusty,” he said, feigning surprise at her outraged expression. “I said your young husband dances well.”

           Another subtle shift in pronunciation, vaar to ver, plausible given his drunken state, but a stretch. Nor was simply “young” a very accurate translation of vaar, carrying more of an implication of wanting size and maturity, as evidenced by the way the man was looming over Obi-Wan with a rather unpleasant smile.

           “You did not,” she spat back.

           “Vaar, I may be,” Obi-Wan replied, assessing the man coolly, “but wise enough to know it’s not always a disadvantage.”

           Satine let out a slow breath. Rely on Obi-Wan to handle the situation with diplomacy.

           “Unlike inebriation, which generally is,” he added.

           Also rely on Obi-Wan to be too damn glib for his own good. She squeezed his hand and rolled her eyes.

           But then, perhaps Obi-Wan had read the situation correctly, as the jibe seemed to shift the big man’s drunken state to good humor rather than belligerence.

           “They said you were mir’sheb.” He landed a playful punch on Obi-Wan’s shoulder with one large hand. True enough, though Satine wouldn’t have put it in quite those terms – the linguistic connection between quick-wittedness and the anatomical region where the Mand’alor met the throne, as it were, had always mystified her.

           “More like mesh’sheb[iii],” someone muttered in passing. Satine spun in the direction of the voice, but the floor was clearing out, making it impossible to tell who had delivered the rather crass compliment - also not untrue, Satine had to admit, and patently obvious given the tailored fit of his trousers.

           “Did you follow all that?” she asked Obi-Wan as he pulled out her chair for her back at their table.

           “I think so. Vague threat to your sovereignty, calling me your prostitute – which is a change, I suppose we can give him points for that – backpedaling and saying he meant to call me puny, and finally that I am apparently known to be a smart-ass, to use the Basic vernacular.” He ticked off the items on his fingers.

           “Oh, did you miss that last anonymous expression of admiration?”

           “Your admiration is the only sort that interests me,” he countered, grinning.

           “Consider it bestowed.”

           “Likewise. In all things, my love,” he told her sweetly, kissing her hand again.

           “I’m looking forward to expressing it more emphatically.”

           “I’m not sure how much emphasis this particular setting can tolerate.”

           “I daresay not much. Do you suppose we can leave yet?”

           “You’d know better than I.”

           By now, the guests were milling around the dessert tables and the wait staff was distributing alcohol freely.

           “Let’s risk it,” Satine said decidedly, running her fingertips over the back of his hand. “We’ve made more daring escapes.”

           “Better wait for the Royal Guards to make it to the dessert table, at least, or I won’t hear the end of it,” he advised with an apologetic, lop-sided smile.

           “An acceptable concession.”

           Fortunately, there was not much that would keep the Royal Guards from uj cake, so the retinue was contentedly stuffed with the beloved confection and ready to leave in short order.

           While many in the government and the population at large remained dubious about her husband, it comforted Satine that Obi-Wan had at least found his footing with the group of Protectors who formed the Royal Guard. Juvenile as it seemed, after he’d shown them all up in swordplay and marksmanship, it had taken finding a martial art at which at least some of them could trounce him – Mandalorian kick-boxing – before they softened towards him. The captain had carefully reassigned anyone who was really hostile due to old prejudices, and those remaining formed a tight-knit group that treated Obi-Wan with respect and a kind of fondness. Despite leaving the Order, he was still jetii, but he was their jetii. These days, they didn’t insult him any less, but it was done in much better humor.

           “A goddamned piece of cake is not so much to ask, after all, is it?” the captain inquired, helmet not quite concealing his amused expression.

           “We waited,” Satine protested. They must have been making quite a habit of leaving events early if this was an ongoing source of ribbing.

           “Never mind the captain,” his lieutenant chimed in, holding the heavy door to the hangar. “When cake is involved, he thinks with his stomach and forgets what it means to be young and in love and think with your…”

           Obi-Wan cleared his throat loudly and cast a stern glance at the guard.

           “Your heart,” he concluded defensively.

           “No doubt with the sweet looks they’ve been casting at each other all night, uj cake seems bland by comparison,” the captain agreed.

           Satine felt her cheeks go a little hot at the guards’ teasing and glanced appreciatively at the adorable blush painted across Obi-Wan’s face as well. Even at the risk of further commentary, she couldn’t resist leaning close to press a kiss against his cheekbone, feeling the warmth of his flushed skin against her lips. The guards’ chuckles were not too high a price to pay for their security, and though Obi-Wan had certainly proven himself an able bodyguard on countless occasions, there were times that she required his undivided attention.

           One of which was fast approaching, as the guards boarded their starfighters and she and Obi-Wan made their way to their shuttle. It would be a long journey back to Sundari at sublight speed, as the two habitable sister planets in the Mandalore system were at far points in their orbits and intrasystem hyperspace jumps were needlessly risky.

           Obi-Wan headed for the shuttle cockpit, but she wrapped her arms around him from behind, tugging him back into the passengers’ quarters. He stumbled back against the bulkhead, resting his hands lightly at her elbows while she nuzzled eager kisses along his neck and jaw.

           “At least let me set the autopilot,” he pleaded with a breathless laugh.

           “That’s probably for the best,” she agreed reluctantly.

           He started to draw away, and then he caught her glance, his eyes bright and his dimpled smile affectionate. Shaking his head a little, he stepped close again to cup her cheek in his hand and kiss her, soft, lingering, and tasting sweetly of familiar spices, until her knees were weak. He broke the kiss too soon, tearing himself away to go attend to the shuttle controls, and she sank down onto the soft couch to catch her breath. The shuttle lifted from the ground, and Satine caught a glimpse of the familiar constellations of the world where she was born through the viewport. Nothing about Kalevala had felt like home for a long time, but perhaps some lingering sense of nostalgia brought the tune of the old folksong, Ruusaanyc Riduur, back into her mind. And this time, she didn’t think of being forced to dance to it with suitors she despised or enemies she feared, but choosing to dance with her own worthy partner. Their life together was like the dance, careful steps around unseen obstacles and the loving support of each other’s hands. There were words to the song, but she only recalled them in snatches – return to my arms… together, we are home. She was singing it softly, without words, by the time Obi-Wan returned to hers, and he joined her, sitting beside her on the couch and clasping their hands together in the particular attitude of the dance. She felt the vibration of his sweet, clear voice in his chest, his breath on her hair as he pulled her against him, resting his other hand at her waist.

           “I thought you didn’t like it,” he pointed out, kissing her temple as she finished the last phrase of music in a soft hum.

           “I changed my mind,” she declared, tugging him into a kiss, slow and deep, as the music replayed in her mind.

           Together, we are home.

 *     *     *     *     *

[i] I put this together from “dala”/woman and “alor”/ruler to be something like “milady��, “queen”, etc.

 [ii] I’m sure the grammar is a nightmare here, but I don’t know how to conjugate verbs in Mando’a. Literally “Your hired-spouse dance good”, but the speaker is very drunk, so…

 [iii] Won’t find this one in the Mando’a dictionary either, smooshed together from related words as “possessing a pleasing posterior” more or less.

[megaboy335]

Mega’s 2019 Top Anime List

Another year of anime has come and gone. This year I ended up watching a lot less due to the over saturation of Isekai and light novel anime, but there was still plenty to enjoy. As usual I consider any show that ended this year as a contender to be on my list. This is simply my opinion and there will be spoilers below.

1) Pokemon Sun & Moon

Starting this list with a show I watched for 3 years, Pokemon Sun and Moon was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with the Pokemon anime. It took the best aspects of XY and added loose animation to the mix. Ash and friends have never had so much personality as each episode brought the characters to life in new ways with funny facial expressions. As an adaptation of the game, Pokemon SM did better in some areas compared to others. The trials were simplified or restructured to account for Ash’s classmates being trial captains in the game. While the Kahuna battles were spaced out very far apart in the anime. I always thought it was strange that in-between major story battles, Ash barely ever thought about the challenges.

The two major story highlights of the anime are Lusamine’s arc and the Pokemon League. Lusamine’s story was the main plot of SM and it played out almost exactly like the game. Her downfall to her Ultra Beasts obsession and then Lillie knocking some sense back into her mom is still an emotional highlight of the series. In any Pokemon anime, the Pokemon League is what brings meaning to Ash’s entire journey through the region. SM’s league is similar to the game where it’s the first league of the region. The rival pairings and matches were completely predictable, but it ended with two big surprises. First, Ash was actually allowed to win for once (matching your character becoming the first champion in the game), and secondly he had a full 6 v 6 match with Kukui. It spanned 3.5 episodes with Ash’s Litten completing its character arc by reaching its final form during the battle. It was a rare match where both parties are battling it out for fun and it ended with a flashy finale of two hype Z-moves. Pokemon SM will be remembered for its simplicity, yet ambitious approach in always showing something new week after week.

2) Mob Psycho 100 Season 2

Mob-Psycho continues where it left off in season 1. The main protagonists have come away from a battle with Claw and now daily life resumes. This season featured a love story, Reigen’s arc, deeper exploration into psychic powers, and the return of Claw. Just like in season 1, Mob continues to excel in two major areas. First is of course the animation. An average episode of Mob is literally that one stand-out episode of a one cour anime. Psychic power usage is often a reflection of emotions and they are animated in different ways depending on the characters thoughts in a particular scene. There were so many highlights this season that it would be impossible to list them all.

Mob’s second strength is the character writing. In season 1 Mob was a boy struggling to create his own identity. This season Mob actively tries to break out of his shell and become his own unique person. We see this through his efforts with the fitness club, again when he separates from Regien, and again as he shows everyone that having psychic powers is no substitute for personal growth or status. Mob is no longer a timid boy like he was at the start of the series. He can now stand on his own two feet and help others who are struggling to get up. Considering there is still a little more manga left to cover, I can only hope it gets one last season to finish out the story.

3) Kaguya-Sama: Love is War

In order to understand the appeal of Kaguya-Sama, just for a second imagine if Death Note was a romantic comedy. Both of the protagonists are locked into a battle of wits to outsmart the other in the events of daily life. The mere act of choosing a vacation spot, going somewhere, or giving an item to each other suddenly becomes a high stakes duel. Kaguya-sama follows Kaguya herself and Shirogane as they try to avoid being the first to admit their love for each other. The side characters only help to add wildcards to each battle such as Chika being able to change the tide of battle with a single phrase.

I enjoyed seeing how absurd each battle would become week after week. The presentation is simple, yet very effective in this anime. Resources were definitely allocated for use in certain places for maximum impact. The voice acting also helped a ton in selling just how important each battle was in the minds of the characters. Overall, the series knows how to play with your expectations. Some battles turn out as expected, some with a twist, and others end on some kind of middle ground. However, each battle brings them a little closer together. I can’t wait for the next season in April.

4) Run with the Wind

Almost all sports anime revolve around high school students trying to become as good as possible and win nationals before the 3rd years graduate. However, Run with the Wind takes a different approach to this formula. It focuses on a group of college students who, at the start at least, would rather do anything else than run. It takes about half of the show before our group of characters even get on the same page about running. I enjoyed how this anime put us into the heads of each character. Some have personal reasons for not wanting to run, while for others it was something trivial. However, by committing themselves to the team they each gained a new outlook on themselves and those around them. It was quite literally an uphill for the team to reach the level of success they got at the end. The final run brilliantly showed how each character learned from the experience and how the time they spent on the team was a positive life changing moment. Run with the Wind shows that it's never too late to try something new.

5) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Golden Wind

Jojo is back on the list after an extended break between parts 4 and 5. Compared to previous stories, Part 5 is most similar to part 3. There is a quest to clear and it involves the main group traveling across the land and defeating enemy stand users each step of the way. The differences between part 5 and its previous stories becoming apparent right away. First off, the protagonist is not a traditional Joestar. He is the son of Dio born from when he had Jonathan’s body. Secondly, the group of main characters are not exactly good guys. As mafia members they display a sense of unity, but lack the high integrity of previous Jojo characters. A connection they all share is being looked down upon in society, but placing a place in the world through Bucciarati’s squad.

The aspect that makes or breaks a JoJo story for me is usually the villain. I consider Diavolo to be the weakest of any villain across the various JoJo stories. During the early arcs of the story, Diavolo comes off as an interesting character. He has a mysterious personality and will clearly stop at nothing to keep his identity hidden, including killing his own daughter. The series then adds layer of complexity when we meet his alter ego Doppio. The two personalities are clearly distinctive, but the line between which one is charge can be murky. However, his character intrigue quickly comes crashing down as the final arc fully brings Diavolo into the limelight. The story comes down to who can control the stand arrow, which is a sharp contrast to previous villains who drove the final arc on the back of their eccentric personalities. While JoJo part 5 is still a good anime, it will always come near the bottom of my favorite JoJo parts.

The Year of High Profile Weekly Shonen Jump Anime Adaptations

As the 2016-17 hits from Weekly Shonen Jump have aged up, all of their anime dropped in succession this year. I am a huge fan of the magazine, so here’s a section with some quick thoughts of their anime.

The Promise Neverland - The anime changed the escape arc from a mental battle to a horror series. While animation is definitely better suited to playing with the idea of show don’t tell, the result ended up being telling the story through a different lens. While I appreciated the idea, I feel it came up short. The loss of Posuka Demizu’s art was another major blow to the mood they were trying to create.

Kimetsu no Yaiba - When the manga first began, I never imagined it would become a 1+ Million seller. Ufotable brought their top class digital effects to a manga that at a quick glance would make anyone think it would be the last series to get such treatment. The anime brought a lot to the table and greatly helped to bring the manga to life. It was a great experience from start to finish (episode 19 is a major highlight of the year). I’m looking forward to the upcoming film.

Dr. Stone - Compared to the other Jump anime this year, Dr. Stone’s animation and presentation stuck very close to the manga (if not even inferior to Boichi’s creative spreads at times). The aspect that sold this anime best was the voice cast. They brought so much life into the characters and conveyed the passion each one has for science and learning. I enjoyed seeing Senku create his inventions in animated form.

Bokuben - This might not exactly be considered “high-profile”, but I can’t help but find myself impressed by the anime week after week. It adds a few touches here and there to better tell a cohesive story and occasionally adds a scene or two. I appreciated the heart the anime brought to the series through the seiyuu. Introducing a new seiyuu unit from the cast was also a nice bonus as well.

Best OP/EDs of the year:

1) One Piece Opening 22 - The One Piece anime has changed dramatically under Tatsuya Nagamine. This opening is fast paced and filled with future story teases. It changes the format by cutting the op run time down to 2 minutes and includes clips of the episode. The final sequence of Luffy vs. Kaido always gets me hyped each to watch the episode each week. 

2) Mob Psycho II Opening - This opening feels like a natural continuation of the first season opening. It once again showcases how the show is full of creative animation and unusual characters.

3) Mix Opening 1- Mitsuru Adachi is known for his nuanced writing of giving characters the space to convey their thoughts. This opening fully shows these traits through its sequence of character shots that feel like a natural usage of his writing style. 

4) Kaguya-Sama Chika Ending - Cute song and amazing choreography. There’s a clear reason why this swept across the internet last winter

5) JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Opening 2 - Not only is Traitor’s Requiem a very cool name for a song for this part of the story, but the plot teases are perfectly timed in the song. The opening animation also kept on giving with the villain version and Giorno later recapturing the opening.

This brings 2019 to a close and another decade comes to an end. As my way of recapping the decade, here is a list of my top shows in each post I have made since I started posting them in 2014:

Space Brothers

Hunter x Hunter

Kill la Kill

Nisekoi

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3

Sore ga Seiyuu

Death Parade

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3 (Second Half)

Hibike Euphonium 

One Punch Man Season 1

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4

Mob Psycho 100 Season 1

Yuri on Ice

Konosuba Season 1

Sakamoto Desu Ga?

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Tsuki Ga Kirei

Re:Creators

Ero-manga Sensei

Owarimonogatari (the Monogatari series in general)

Hugtto Precure

A Place Further than the Universe

Yuru Camp

Dragonball Super

S.S.S.S. Gridman

[yoosea-mysme]

Did not expect anyone to ask about my OCs x’D I assume because of my matchups from @marshmallowprotection​

First thing, which I myself often forget: these ocs are actually technically inserted characters in a pre-existing universe, a French roleplay youtube series. I originally just started imagining different scenarios for the existing characters and then basically did the “let’s give them kids and see what happens” thing. Kinda lame concept, but I love the characters I created for it, and I’ve had them for… a couple years now? Second thing, that universe is magical fantasy, I just didn’t mention it in the matchups because it wasn’t relevant (nor how they end up in Mysme’s world, shush). Now that I’ve thoroughly disappointed you, here are the characters themselves, the cousins/siblings gang (because I’m unsure about giving names, we’re gonna call them Big Sister, Younger Brother, Adopted Cousin and Lyn):

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We’ve got Adopted Cousin (here), the oldest one, he’s actually the only one not blood related to the others. Black with green eyes, VERY tall and thin, originally he was meant to have long blond hair, but I have a tendency to picture him with a black long ponytail so it’s still unclear. He’s an orphan who became the apprentice and then adopted son of a character who is HIMSELF not blood related to the parents of the others, but because their parents treat him as family, he’s their uncle and his son is ergo their cousin. It’s the law. If anyone questions it Big Sister will punch them in the face. Hard. He’s also the only one of the group who has zero connection to magic nor any interest in it whatsoever. For a long time, he avoided the topic of his family because he didn’t want to relieve the trauma of losing them, and tried to focus only on his new family; he’s gotten better at talking about it since (though I won’t go into details on how they died). Easily the most chill and calm of the whole group; all he wants is to get to do his experiments, invent some cool stuff, read, draw and sew because it’s soothing. 98% of the time he gets roped in an adventure is against his will by his cousins (other 2% is when he wants to get his hands on something forbidden to study it; the only times he gets in trouble he does not mess around. Go big or go home, what’s the use of going apeshit if you don’t even get arrested). He just wants to stay home and hyperfocus. Please let him take a nap (they don’t).

The advantage of constantly being thrown around by creatures of hubris is that it puts into practice your quick-thinking skills: very promptly got used to taking charge of every kind of situation no matter how crazy and keeping everything and everyone under control, and will get frustrated when people don’t listen to him (he’ll make them listen). Even though they should technically get along great for being the two most reasonable, he often butts head with Big Sister because of his leading nature (“No I don’t think you’re dumb, please I just want us to survive this let me handle it”) His adoptive father is himself in a huge position of authority so he’s learned a lot from him. He’ll drag everyone safe back home by force if he has to (even if he has noodle arms).

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We’ve got the Big Sister (here). Physically perfect mix of her grandmothers, but with her father’s older sister body type (aka: huge): long dark blonde wavy hair and blue (?) eyes. Arguably most attractive face of the bunch. Her father is basically a paladin, her mother is petite but strong (not a fighter though) her aunt is at the head of an army, and she wants in on it. Since she was very young she’s trained with her father in the hopes to join their army (and succeeded) and she’s become the epitome of a huge muscular woman in so doing. She tries to follow her father’s ideals of “justice and protection to the weak and innocent” in theory, but due to her sometimes abrasive attitude (which she gets from him), and the fact that she has inherited a lot of her mother’s personality (a “the end justifies the means” kinda gal), she can sometimes have a warped vision of morality that she has to work on a lot. Sadly, she’s also inherited a bit of her father’s introverted exterior and aunt’s “in case of doubt, punch” reasoning and honestly, that’s just a whole mess of a personality combo but she tries her best. She’s easily the most confident and assertive of the group and never doubts her abilities or goals (sometimes maybe a bit too much), might even boast a lot tad. She’s extremely protective of her loved ones and is the kind that will yell at you for getting in trouble (big sister vibe +1); before her older cousin was adopted she was used to being the oldest of the family and therefore still feels responsible of everyone’s safety, she’ll definitely always try to be in control for every situation. She actually butts head a lot with her adoptive cousin because of them both taking the “older and wiser” role, and it took her a while to begrudgingly admit he’s often better than her at handling things, and that they should just work together instead of trying to one-up each other. She loves messing with people (ESPECIALLY her younger brother whom she can drive MAD) but hates being messed with and will definitely get her revenge. She does her typical “older sibling friendly bullying” thing, but if you trashtalk her brother anywhere near her you’re dead. Only she can mess with him, it’s the law.

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We’ve got the middle child (here), the one I called Lyn (actually a character from another story, this one created entirely by me, that I inserted here once just because and somehow she ended up with an entirely different backstory and family). Related to the other two Brother and Sister by blood (dad is their mother’s half-brother). Somehow looks more like her father’s sister than her parents, also a lot like her mother though she hates to admit it. Her mother had her without ever telling her dad and was extremely abusive to her for 10 years (she has scars, mostly on her back). At that age her father, who was married, found out about her and tried to get in contact with her, until he found out the way she was being treated. Her mom tried to get rid of him by getting him arrested, but his sister-in-law (maybe?? What do you call the sister of the husband of your sister??? She’s the head of the army I mentioned earlier) pulled some strings and managed to get him and his husband custody as well as getting the mom banished. Lyn hasn’t seen her since (but she will ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ). She’s extremely happy with her dads now and thankful to have them.

Her dad is actually a fire mage and she has great control over fire herself, but no interest in pursuing that talent academically; she’s good with knowing how to burn stuff that annoys her when necessary. She greatly prefers to run around outside; she’s really good at sports, an extremely good climber and fighter, runs fast and is agile (all this taught to her by her stepdad). She’s not as much of a “horse girl” as her cousin, but she’s got her own horse (she created it; don’t ask) and she loves him to death. Has absolutely no clue what she wants to do with her life as an accomplished adult and honestly neither do I; maybe she’ll end up going on adventures for the sake of it like the original characters, why not. She honestly doubts herself, her own abilities and her future a lot, but usually tries to hide it behind jokes and smiles. She’s actually extremely resourceful and a quick-thinker, but only if doing so will end in mischief. Sidenote: she drives her adopted cousin up the fucking wall. He just wants to rest and be chill most of the time and she somehow always gets him mixed up in her messes, which he always has to help her clean up. He loves her, but damn does he also want to strangle her. (And now I can see the Vanderwood/Saeyoung vibes, god dammit @marshmallowprotection​  was right about both their matches)

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And finally, the Younger Brother (here). Perfect mix of his parents, white, grandma’s wavy locks, dark hair and blue eyes, arguably the cutest (his sister and his side of the family just got the bamf genes): youngest of the whole gang, used to being doted on, particularly by his sister. Also used to not being taken seriously because he’s young and being messed with a lot, PARTICULARLY by his sister. He has a huge inferiority complex towards her because he’s always felt like she was more accomplished and closer to their father than he was (which is partially true because since she pursued the same career as him they just got to spend a lot of time training etc. but he loves his children equally. He himself is closer to their mother and mother’s brother) and had a better grasp than him on what to do with her life and how to achieve her goals. He later discovered himself a talent in magic and learned a lot through his grandfather and his mother’s brother the mage; successfully entered the same school as he, one of the best of its kind and has been receiving nothing but praise since. He’s very excited about his studies now. Still very cunning and ambitious.

I mentioned in his matchup description him being easy to manipulate due to his insecurities (also true in love; my baby was in an abusive relationship for some time, his first love, but he’s okay now (his sister and Lyn avenged him…)) and hurting someone he loved because of it: that’s actually Lyn. When he was younger and still dabbling with magic, he started to learn things outside of his level due to the manipulations of his grandfather (that guy is a whole other story, we’re not gonna get into it). Lyn tried to warn him that he was going too far, but tired of never being taken seriously, he tried to prove her wrong and accidentally injured her (and then ran away for two weeks because he had no idea what to do and had a major breakdown). Lyn lost her sight from her left eye; she got most of her sight back now, though not all, but couldn’t get rid of the scar on her face. He felt particularly guilty because out of the entire group, Lyn was the one he had the closest kinship and relationship with due to them being the youngest and certified troublemakers and he couldn’t cope with what he did to her. Lyn was the one who forgave him, helped him get out of that bad mental place, reject their grandfather and get help, and they’ve become even closer ever since, basically inseparable. (Which to me makes the fact I ship them both with TWINS hilarious. Actually damn, that whole thing reminds me a lot of Saeran attacking Saeyoung too because of his mental state and Saeyoung being the one to help him anyway. I’m starting to understand why I ship them with the twins).

 … hope you don’t regret asking, anon x’DD

[cjostrander]

Thirty Seconds to Mars: AMERICA

Good morning everyone; i was nicely surprised by the response for my last review of Rammstein’s latest album. So i’m gonna go to another newer one that i never really gave a thorough listen. This is the latest album by Thirty Seconds to Mars and is their final release with their long time guitarist Tomo Milicevic. It seems he departed for personal issues as vague as that is but since they haven’t replaced him maybe there’s wiggle room for him to return down the road. From what i’ve gotten this album takes a venture into a more pop direction than the experimental rock of previous releases. I am going in blind so let’s get started and hopefully it’s an overlooked gem.

Walk on Water (Single): Okay so all the album singles are going to hit you right away. It starts with some low synths and worldly vocal segments that are meant to give the song an ambitiously motivational pop foundation. Jared is not bad vocally but keeps things very basic lyrically. Instrumentally it fits decent for a pop setting that could be danced to somewhat; though it does lack the artistic complexity of any of their previous work. So i am guessing this album is venturing for a less is more mainstream approach. The use of backing choir elements is a good touch for playing on the song’s atmospheric tendencies. The drums are okay and if they didn’t sound programmed it would bring elements of Radiohead and Fall Out Boy together in a odd but convincing combination. It is not a bad choice for opening the album up since it is a simple ease in for the listener that does contain some catchy elements to convince the listener to give them a chance. 7/10

Dangerous Night (Single): This next single begins with an emotionally compelling vocal entrance from Jared that delivers a stronger set of lyrics. They bring in some pop rock acoustics and combine it with synths to create an uplifting atmosphere. Because of that it still retains a minimalist approach that does manage to give him ample support. Though Jared’s lyrical flow is realistically the only thing that will make or break it for the listener; because the instrumentals otherwise wouldn’t have much to really bring attention to themselves. It does have a decent little synth interlude to build up a low key dance opportunity; but nothing more than that. I will give them props for keeping most of the songs in the three minute range because they would feel a lot more drawn out in the 4 to 5 minute range. 7/10

Rescue Me (Single): The final single of this album begins with more of that pop rock guitaring that is nicely melodic till the drum loops arrive. Jared is left a little alone in terms of support since the instrumentals don’t truly seem to have what it takes to lift his otherwise promising vocal delivery. So far this album is setting itself up to be best listened to in the background instead of being analyzed like their previous work had the benefit of. Other than that this one doesn’t really bring in anything to the table in terms of being memorable let alone catchy. 5/10

One Track Mind (Featuring ASAP Rocky): The synths start this off on a blissfully soothing note and the muffled voice of the guest vocalist is a refreshing change of pace. Jared’s vocals are a bit processed but he manages to finally succeed in creating a very emotionally deep effect on the listener. He is supported minimally as expected on here but to a much more meaningful effect. This would be a decent one to play while winding down for bed at night. His lyrics are delivered very carefully and deliver a stronger sense of substance to the listener even though they are highly repetitive. This might of been a better pick for a single than Rescue Me but it really depends on how they sell it. The guest vocals show up towards the end and do a pretty good job of staying true to the intended sound of the song; while also lyrically paying tribute to the band. 8/10

Monolith: This minute and a half long number starts off with some drum beats that finally appear to build some classic tension for the following track. It may of been a good opener for the album to please their older fans since it makes use of solid harmonies and classical string elements. It combines with a blast riffs they used heavily on their last album. It is too short to score on this album but it helps to lift this album up a bit finally. 0/0

Love is Madness (Featuring Halsey): This one starts from the previous track into a dark and gloomy call and response duet between Jared and the guest vocalist. They actually do a really good job of working together without appearing to force it. They both grow rather ambitious in their delivery and use a strong diversity of energy to set a sense of tense conflict between the two singers. Because of this the lyrics prove to be some of the strongest on the album and contain a very compelling dose of catchiness. This is definitely a highlight on the album and a clear example of what their pop sound should be like on this album. 9/10

Great Wide Open: This song begins with a soothing loop open that creates a very compelling sense of blissful atmosphere. Jared arrives with a slightly gospel demeanor. He finally seems to be shaping the album’s pop approach into something that is finally engaging and understandable. The lyrics are pretty compelling and benefit a bit from the drawn out delivery; even if it risks feeling sluggish when overly analyzed. This and the last track would of been smart picks for singles. This one mainly because it demonstrates the compelling strength of Jared’s vocals and could bring some similarities to sound and spirit on This Is War (Reviewed). 9/10

Hail to the Victor: This track begins with a little more spacey approach. It explores a sense of emptiness and vulnerability before shifting into some more energizing drum beats. The stronger use of synths and distortion works decently to change things up; as well as add a sense of convincing emotion to Jared’s lyrics. It helps to set up a mood of conflict and rising to overcome it. I can see a better dance reaction to it since it is better suited for a live performance or late night club scene than most of their earlier tracks were. 8.5/10

Dawn Will Rise: We begin this track off with some soft electric riffs and french female vocals to give it a nice sense of artistic class. Synths arrive to slowly seep a danceable yet peacefully relaxing presence. Jared’s vocals feel a bit processed but deliver some sufficient lyrics to focus on while the song progresses. His vocals vibration can get a hair annoying but overall he does succeed in achieving a sense of catchiness that will enable the listener to appreciate this song. 8/10

Remedy: Acoustic riffs start off with an interesting rustic approach. I think Shannon Leto is singing on this one and his more rough approach fits rather nicely with the tone of this song and offers an interesting surprise for the listener to encounter. I definitely appreciate them changing things up with this track because it adds some diversity and helps to set the album up for a gradual conclusion. I actually wouldnt mind hearing a solo album from Shannon if this is in fact him on vocals. 8.5/10

Live Like a Dream: This track begins with a nicely soothing yet modestly energetic opening. This one sounds a bit more familiar to their older work. Jared demonstrates a masterful control over his vocals and helps to keep things feeling inspirational and interesting as the song progresses. He delivers a firm sense of catchiness without trying to take away the subtle impact from his instrumental support.  I definitely think a few more tracks like this on the album would of made their pop venture a bit easier to get into; though by this point they have pretty much returned to the sound of their last album instead of their intended mainstream soft pop. Kind of creates a damned if you do; damned if you don’t situation for them ha ha. 8.5/10

Rider: Here’s the finale track to the album and it begins rather softly with some audio backing before Jared arrives to deliver a wounded and compelling vocal presence. The acoustic riffs and drum loops create a rather nice ambiance that is cleverly complex and emotionally engaging. It helps to establish a very fulfilling sense of farewell to this album. 8.5/10

Overall album rating: 7.9/10

Even though this album had some lackluster bumps in the first half; the second half is very solid and will please their fan base if they give it a chance. Their attempt at more direct pop in the first half i don’t believe works really well for them; because of their emphasis on slowness and heavy complexity verses the faster and catchier elements that i believe pop requires. I wouldn’t mind it if they tried to incorporate a more successful dance element into the music but i feel that it wouldn’t be in the band’s nature otherwise they would end up sounding like a modern day Maroon 5. Still; i would still suggest giving it a listen in album sequence and see what you think. It’s going to be conflicted but that feeling alone should feel fitting coming from this band. Hopefully they learn from whatever input they got on this album and build on it for their next album; which i hope but doubt won’t take another 5 years to release.

[the-erudite-library]

Villainy pt 1: The Big Bads

okay i’m going to just admit right now that this post is a little biased, but i’m a salty, overanalyzing fuck so i’m going to write it anyways.

for the sake of ease of understanding, lets pretend that all the antagonists in this story are actual villains (villainy describes a malicious intent where as antagonism describes a character who is direct opposition to the protagonist) and ignore the biased narration of the series being that it’s told from a first person perspective (more on why that makes understanding the characters in this series shitty and confusing can be found here). I care a lot about the antagonists in this series and so it just feels right that i write a fucking essay based entirely around how cool they are, their wasted potential, and why some of them are just way, way cooler than others. I’m just going to go ahead and cover all the supposed villains rather than just the big bads, and i’m probably going to massively overestimate their complexity and actually try to work out a narrative for all of them because a lot of these supposed villains are actually rather sympathetic characters when they’re looked at from the right angle and honestly the narrative kind of treats them like garbage. I’m not saying that any of them were totally justified in their actions, I just think that sometimes the plot and writing of the story is so aggressively vague, biased, and nonsensical that it can be difficult to understand them.

I genuinely think that Jeanine is the best antagonist out of all of them, and I’m sure that that can be fiercely debated because really it depends on what you mean when you say ‘best’. What I mean is that I appreciate the way that there are all these little breadcrumbs for people to draw their own conclusions about her but nothing that ever really redeems her as a person, also that she’s really the closest to an actual villain that the story ever gets. I already talked about how she’s really not in the post linked above and also in this one, how she’s really a morally gray and complex person. But what I also love about her is that she’s so incredibly straightforward about everything. For the most part, she doesn’t waste much time with theatrics or melodrama, she just does the thing (aside from that one thing with the water tank in the first book that was really kind of out of character for what had just been established about her and i could not have been more glad when they changed it in the movie). Her plan makes sense, the goals are clear and her methods are obviously well thought out; I wouldn’t at all be surprised if she spent years putting it all together piece by tiny piece without anyone ever seeing it coming but by the time they did there was no stopping it. She went to great lengths to protect her own image even after the Abnegation attack and for the most part it really felt like it was just Tris and her scrawny little army up against this massively powerful woman who had the whole city at her beck and call (if you ignore the fact that the insurgency never really lost a battle of course). She suffered no fools and for the most part seemed to keep everyone at an arms length; no one knew the full scope of the plan but her and no one could ever get close enough to eventually betray her. She built up an empire of people that she held together for quite some time. Even as the war began to tip out of Erudite’s favor, no important people ever seemed to even try to leave (Jack Kang is the only example that I can think of that didn’t die before things really began to fall apart for Erudite, which leads me to think that she didn’t have all that many important associates to begin with). She was kind of one track minded and completely relentless in chasing down her goals, and it made her terrifying because you knew that she was just never going to stop until she got what she was after. She wasn’t above using any and every dirty and underhanded tactic at her disposal so long as it got her what she wanted. She wasn’t an antagonist that could be handled easily or quietly; stopping her required amassing an army and half-destroying the entire city because anything less would have been snuffed out before it could gain any traction because she was just that powerful. She always seemed to be one step (or ten) ahead and defeating her ultimately required having not much of a plan at all or a plan that not everyone was clear on because chaos was the one thing she couldn’t break down, compartmentalize, and ultimately conquer.

Jeanine and Tris’ dynamic is interesting to say the least, and not in a shippy way but in like a very genuinely compelling way. I’m going to include movie canon in this because despite how shit the movies were about some details, others were greatly improved upon (i.e. replacing the water tank bullshit with a straight up execution, it may have been a little bit less dramatic but it was far more in line with Jeanine’s character). From the very moment they meet, Tris is full of snark and sass no matter how inappropriate it may be in the moment. What they have isn’t so much witty banter as it is Tris making really disrespectful comments and Jeanine starting off as being polite about it and she just gradually loses her patience. They clash on the deepest level, not really equals but complete opposite. Let’s be honest with ourselves; Tris was not more powerful than Jeanine, she was not smarter, in the grand scheme of things she wasn’t stronger either. Which makes the fact that she was able to best her really interesting. Jeanine doesn’t handle chaos well and Tris is almost all chaos. It’s hardly a game of chess and more like one person losing and deciding to knock all the pieces off the table...which in and of itself is a kind of victory I guess.

Evelyn is...an interesting villain. For the most part, she seems to be a person driven largely by hatred and fear as a result of years and years of suffering and pain piling up on top of each other like some sort of sedimentary rock of trauma. She very well may have started out as someone who was simply just power hungry, or maybe not power hungry but just ambitious. I highly doubt she was cut out for Abnegation and there is a lot of evidence that she’s Divergent (if she’s not then it’s kind of unclear exactly where she would fit, Erudite maybe). From the way that things are set up in the Four novellas, it sounds a lot like her plans have been coming together for a long time too and that they have been the complete and total focus of her life. She brought together potentially thousands of people, made them obey her, made them fight and die for her, but most impressively she made them stick by her for years when they had absolutely no reason to. It’s kind of insinuated, if not outright said, that Evelyn is completely self made and that everything that the factionless are they what are because she built them up like that. By all accounts, she is just as impressive as Jeanine and quite the force to be reckoned with. However, her reasons for doing what she does make her all the more interesting. Like I said, perhaps she might have started out with a simple desire to be powerful and that may have been why she picked Abnegation in the first place, in hopes of getting on the council (i’ve seen that theory tossed out in fanfic before and it actually makes a lot of sense). But Marcus’ treatment of her and the way that many of the Abnegation are just so willfully ignorant, the way that they will go to great lengths to protect their image as a faction (and by extension, Marcus’ image as a leader) even if that means turning a blind eye to the fact that she was being abused must have been much more than disillusioning. It certainly couldn’t have done any good for her emotionally and by the time Four reunites with her for the first time in his novella she is a far cry from the woman that he knew as a child because she had to become someone else entirely just to survive. 

It obviously spurred a powerful desire for revenge within her, not just against the man who wronged her but against the faction system as a whole that neglected her and held her down. When she finally saw her chance to take that revenge it wasn’t her capitalizing on the war, on Dauntless’ fracturing, Abnegation’s destruction, and Erudite getting less trustworthy by the day. No, it was her perceiving a hairline fracture in the very foundation of the system that wouldn’t become anything threatening for literal years. Much like Jeanine, she stacked the deck in her favor long before anyone knew what she was doing; and in her case she had the extra advantage of nearly everyone who knew her thinking she was dead. Evelyn’s Factionless and Jeanine’s Erudite were two very powerful and very similar forces led by two very powerful and very similar women, and honestly it’s a damn shame that we got Tris constantly butting in and all but bending fate in her favor when we could have had a delightfully destructive and complex war with Jeanine and Evelyn as the central focusses.

Especially because Evelyn has a flat, kind of boring, and frankly rather irritating relationship with Tris. I think they maybe say a few sentences to each other ever, despite Tris hating her and wanting so badly to fight her. And I get it, Tris hates her for abandoning Tobias and that’s kind of understandable I guess, but given the fact that she was meant to be one of the big villains in book three one would think that there would be more of an interaction. I mean, sure, they had that one thing at the beginning of Allegiant with the interrogation scene but I’m like 90% sure that was the longest conversation they’d ever had or ever would have and it’s disappointing. 

And then there’s David, the disappointment of the three big bads imo. Generally most elements of Allegiant were disappointing and frustrating, but David was honestly one of the worst elements. He was sort of cooler in the movie, and by cooler I mean a hell of a lot creepier especially regarding Tris. Combine his relationship with Tris in the movie with the fact that in the books it’s very heavily implied that he had unrequited feelings for Natalie and it makes his relationship with her both fascinating and unsettling. Of course, that’s all wasted because those two qualities are exclusive to the book and movie respectively, therefore making his relationship with her sort of flat in both. He doesn’t really have all that much “screen” time in the books at all, at least not in comparison to characters like Nita and Matthew. He had virtually no personality and the only reason I’m including him here at all is because of the role he plays in the Allegiant movie. I’m not saying that he has the same potential or deserves the same amount of plot focus that Evelyn and Jeanine do (mainly because they just have had more time for their characters to build), but honest to god if VRoth was going to make genetic damage a metaphor for oppression (don’t get me started on how badly that was handled) at least, maybe, i don’t know, give the oppressors more than a vague and distant role in the story. I’m not in any way saying that the issues between the GD and GP people should have been highlighted, because god knows that VRoth would have just handled it poorly and I would legit have probably set something on fire. And David doesn’t need to be humanized, what he needs to be is a direct counter to Tris’ ego. If absolutely nothing else that should have been the role of all the Bureau characters save for Amar and George. Tris lowkey kind of doesn’t know how to be wrong and thinks that she knows better than absolutely everyone, and when she’s revealed to be something ~special~ again in Allegiant she became even more of an asshole. She very obviously did think that the genetically pure or the Divergent or whatever were better than the genetically damaged and it goes unacknowledged to the point where i’m just convinced that it’s completely accidental. She’s completely unsympathetic to the actual oppression that the genetically damaged face. 

But I digress.

David is honestly too distant and vague as a character to be analyzed very closely, which is unfortunate because he could have paralleled real people with real sociopolitical philosophies.

[long-live-the-power---rangers]

First Fight

Hello I am two days late for Power Rangers day but here: have a fic of the first team of my Canon rewrite celebrating their first battle.

(This vaguely adapts Dairanger in that those are more or less the suits they wear.)

Rating: G

Word Count: 925

Read on Ao3: here

Tylon’s laugh is the most beautiful thing Zordon has ever heard, and it almost makes up for his doubts, as the beautiful fatol takes off xir helmet to reveal a bright smile and hair frizzing slightly from its tightly braided wreath around xir head but still beautiful and bright, like the rest of them…

(Okay, he admits it. Zordon might have actually developed a crush on xir. But he can’t just ruin their friendship for this!)

“We just fought off five hundred lorunozet,” xe says. “And I’m not even tired.”

“This is incredible,” Zia adds, green helmet in one hand and magical sword in the other, her face thoughtful but excited. “More than any of our tests.”

“I’ve never felt so sure, in a battle,” Reikan says, helmet off and hugging Zpektar in her excitement, making him drop his red helmet in surprise. Somehow, unlike the rest of them, her hair remains impeccable in a complex series of loops. “Right, Zpektar-u?”

Zpektar nods.

“I’ve never felt so in control,” he says, with that smirk that would look evil on anyone else’s face, but it’s in Zpektar’s golden eyes and on his black-blue face, and Zordon can’t help but smile back, when Zpektar turns to him. “So what do you think, Zordon?”

“Amazing,” he admits. “Pure Power… and pure good.”

“Which is why the stone must have chosen us!” Tylon says. “Because we’re so good.”

Zordon nods, raising his right wrist and reforming his metamorphosis device over the glove.

“Power down,” he says. “And yes. I can’t name better people than the four of you.”

“Hey, don’t forget you’re our leader,” Zpektar says, voice on edge, which Zordon tries to ignore. He knows his friend is ambitious, but he was more than that. “You even have the golden transformation device.”

“We really need to pick a shortened name for these, already,” Zia points out, in true Zia fashion.

“I think Power Braces work,” Reikan says. “But…”

“It doesn’t sound right,” Tylon immediately replies. “Neither does metamorphosis device, transformation device, transformer, trans brace, or any other phrase we’ve found.”

“I guess the words will come,” Zordon says. “Like they always do.”

“But from where?” Zpektar asks, same edge of worry in his tone as Zordon’s own thoughts. Zordon sighs.

“That, I don’t know,” he says, sharing a pointed glance with his best friend. “And it worries me.”

Reikan blinks, twitching her head from side to side and pulling away from Zpektar to shout her own “Power Down” with a dramatic flip and landing, lavender mini-dress lined with Pink replacing her at-the-time silver Ranger suit.

“Are we really worrying on the day of our first victory?” She asks. “Come on! The ship’s got a nice crappy food replicator and I want my shitty and sugarless celebratory cake!”

And she’s off, with Zia not far behind her, the Green Ranger rambling about the readings that the ship had hopefully taken from the battle.

Zordon honestly can’t wait to join her. But he’s not stupid, and he can see Zpektar’s smile slipping from more than just questions about their new Power.

Tylon, obviously also noticing this, walks up to Zordon. Xe whispers a quiet “talk to him, Zordon-u” before following after the others.

The atmosphere drops, in seconds.

“This was the real reason you wanted to fight, isn’t it?” Zordon asks. Zpektar flinches and then sighs.

“I can’t fool you, can I?” He says. “Never could.”

Zordon scoffs.

“No one who knows you could really believe you did this, for power,” he says. “But for this Power…”

“We don’t know what it is,” Zpektar says. “Not even you or Zia-i could figure it out. The only thing left is to tempt whatever gave it to us into revealing themself.”

“And help in the war, while we’re at it,” Zordon says. Zpektar blinks, twitching his head sharply to each side.

“Just because you’re a pacifist doesn’t change the existence of the war, Mister Ka-Zerenon,” he says. “And I asked to be leader to cover you.”

“It’s just easier to play into what people expect of a Black,” Zordon says, repeating their conversation, from a week ago. Zpektar smirks.

“Exactly.”

Zordon smiles.

“You know, it really was amazing,” he says. “This is different than when we trained together.”

Zpektar laughs.

“Spoiled Quokal hasn’t been to war,” he teases. Zordon shrugs.

“Not since we were kids,” he says. “I miss orange.”

“Nobody misses orphanage orange,” Zpektar says, immediately. “Especially not you.”

Zordon smirks.

“It grew on me,” he says.

“Like Tylon-o did?” Zpektar teases.

“Yes,” Zordon says and immediately regrets, as Zpektar laughs and laughs. “I mean, as a friend.”

Zpektar just keeps laughing.

“You are so fucking in love with that fatolo that it hurts,” he says. Zordon glares, without any real malice.

“You’re luck you don’t like people like that,” he says. Zpektar shrugs. “Just makes me more loyal to my friends.”

Loyal to his friends, even when they…

Zordon sighs.

“Zpektar,” he begins. “I want you to know that I’ll always trust you, so please, tell me… do you really want to be leader?”

“No,” Zpektar says immediately, voice and face perfectly sincere.

(Well, to anyone who didn’t know him. Because this is the same face he made when Zordon was given his white clothing, four hundred years ago.)

Zordon smiles.

“Okay,” he says. “Now, let’s go catch up with the others!”

Zpektar laughs and races past him, still in morph.

“Race you!” He says.

Not fair!

Smiling, Zordon chases after him.

He’s the last one there.

(Of course he is.)

[itsgalaxy29]

The Wicked King Review

This book was absolutely fanomable. It exceeded my expectations and desires completely. In my opinion, the book had excellent pacing; there was never a dull moment, like some might feel there was in The Cruel Prince. The plot was intriguing, especially the political aspect. It really captured what it is like to have to adapt to a shift in power as well as alliances. Jude’s character is one of the strongest YA protagonists I’ve read in a long time. Her movitavions are completely her, as well as her many flaws. The development of all the characters and relationships was also done very well to a point I could see the dynamics change when usually I don’t notice anything at all. This was a 5/5 star read, and even though it’s only the beginning of 2019, I can tell this is going to be one of my absolute favorites of the year.

Spoilers Below

Political aspect

In the beginning of the novel, Jude is running Elfhame by herself, with no help from Cardan or the council. And Jude is perfect for that role. She is ambition and at a huge disadvantage being human. But she is power hungry to a fault. And fights every second for that power, no matter the cost.

“I am playing the High King in her little pageant” page 32.

It was so interesting to watch Jude plan and be a true ruler from the background. She negotiated, tricked, deceived. So much so that Cardan never truly believed he was king. Jude was the Queen of Elfhame all along. She truly learned that “power is much easier to acquire than it is to hold on to” (6).

But to see her be a true match for Madoc once again was so satisfying. Jude is constantly underestimated, and while that might play to her advantage, it was super frustrating to watch. When Macod found out she had been commanding Cardan all along? Perfection. He won’t underestimate her again, that’s for sure.

Plus the fact that he is now not sworn to any court scares me. He could attack at any turn.

Now the undersea is a whole different story. They are the constant threat in this book that Jude is rightly obsessing over. The entire time, Jude tries to outmaneuver and protect the throne. Is Balekin involved? How can I manipulate that connection? What do I have to do to protect Oak? “Someone you trust has already betrayed you”. The threat of the undersea is there, and will still be there in the Queen of Nothing. I look forward to seeing how it all plays out in the end.

Jude

I love Jude so much. She is one of my favorite characters because of how real she is. Yes she’s clever and ambitious and sometimes even cruel, but we see her weaknesses clearly. She is human in a faerie realm. She has a hunger for power. She is alone. She is vulnerable. It’s not like she’s unstoppable. We know her to be self-conscious in Queen of Mirth and afraid in the Undersea. For once, a character is portrayed like an actual person.

When she is in the undersea Jude knows she is “almost broken” (241). There is no one for her to talk to and she is truly isolated from everyone she knows. Despite this, she is resilient. She

Survives the undersea, and recovers. She kills Balekin, a prince of fairie, because she outwits him.

So “let’s assume [she] know[s] everything… Everything. Always” (53).

Cardan

In this book, we get to know Cardan a little bit more. Why he is so cruel and what he is truly capable of. I really appreciated seeing this other aspect to his character, as it makes him more complex than before. Throughout the whole book we are told Cardan is actually really clever, which I knew to some extent, but the ending really showed me how clever he really is. Cardan got everything he wanted by actually wanting it in the first place; by having actual desires. This is a huge development from the first book, when he had no motivation to do anything productive; only committed cruelties. But now as the High King he puts his mind to work. He gets himself unbound from Jude, accesses to all the powers of Elfhame, and manipulatives everyone in the process, something we haven’t seen him do before without violence.

I also think this book further establishes Cardan’s beliefs and own morals. He will not be a murderer. No matter what. He sees this as his one virtue, so when this virtue is inherently broken by Jude when she murdered Balekin after him specifically telling her not to not only breaks him, but turns him furious.

Jurdan

Do I even have to say anything? Everything was perfection. Everything. The Wicked King starts off with them completely at odds with each other. They both hate each other. Cardan for the betrayal of the Cruel Prince and Jude because of her feelings and also how difficult he makes it to be the crown she is saving for her brother. But as the novel progresses, their relationship develops into mutual compliance and even care. “I am shaking, I realize. The aftereffects of believing someone tried to assassinate Cardan, of realizing he could have died” (52).

He gets under her skin in ways no one else can. They match, in a twisted way. Both are extremely clever and vicious, but neither trusts easy. That’s why it’s so significant when they start to trust one another, when Cardan put Jude before his people, Cardan especially; “I trust you. I trusted you” (300).

Of course the sexual tension is off the charts. And of course it starts at the very beginning of the book with this beauty: “Kiss me again… Kiss me until I am sick of it” (57). And pages 143-146. I don’t even know what to say. It was written beautifully and encapsulated the atmosphere perfectly.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.” Remind you of anything? Jude Jude Jude Jude Jude…

And this line:  “of all the things he’s ever done to me, making me like him so much is by far the worst.” This line is their relationship in 20 words. They obviously deeply care for each other, but they both hate these feelings with such intensity that it isolates them from each other.

Totally off topic, but when Jude goes to the castle for the first time after getting back from the undersea and Cardan thinks someone is trying to kill him, but immediately relaxes when he realizes it’s Jude and then pull her onto the bed on top of him?? Amazing. (264)

Taryn and Locke

Now, I hate Locke as much as anyone else does, but I also find his character so fascinating. He creates stories for his own amusement and always figures out how to make it more interesting. He is cunning and unrelenting. He has a way to make people want to be around him and do what he pleases. That’s why Jude like him and why Taryn married him. Designing the entirely of the Queen of Mirth was for his own pleasure. He wanted to see Cardan’s and Jude’s reaction because he was curious.

And for the first time in this book, we see Locke’s weaknesses. He needs to be in control of the story and he can get jealous very easily. He attacks Jude for this reason. He needs to win the control back from Jude afraid she terrified him.

Taryn on the other hand I don’t find compelling in the slightest bit. I understand her motives; Why she married locke. Why she distances herself from Jude in the Cruel Prince. Why she so desperately needs to fit in. But in spite of all this, I’m still so angry with her. She already betrayed Jude once, and then she does it again? In favor of the man who killed her mother and father and going against her twin sister. I get that she needs to adapt and fit into fairie, but if she so easily betrayed the person who she loves the most who’s to say she’s capable of loyalty at all?

The Twists/ Queen of Nothing Predictions

The ghost’s betrayal really threw me off. I loved him and I was shocked and hurt by his commitment to a dead Prince. It caused Jude suffering a month’s torment in the undersea and in the end made everything fall to pieces (at least for Jude).

The marriage. Oh my god. That came out of nowhere but I was so happy when it happened. Jude is technically the official Queen of Elfhame now. And Jurdan is married! Married!

Now the exile to the mortal realm crushed my soul. Cardan planned it out really well, I’ll give him that. He used Jude’s own ring, got himself out of the contract, and tricked Jude all in one. I’ve seen a lot of people saying that Cardan did this to protect Jude, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think he found out about Jude murdering Balekin and decided after that. The idea might have been in his head for a while; in fact we know it was because he states he needs to make his own decisions and be the actual King of faerie. But I think he decided to what extend to really do that moments before doing so.

As for how Jude will get back, I think she will use the crown Grimsen had built and find a loophole in the exile. I’m really hoping it doesn’t take her that long to do so though. I need Jude to get back to faerie and be back in her element as soon as possible. Queen of Nothing is the last book and there’s so much that needs to be told. Jude and Cardan have to development their relationship again. They have to figure out the ruling situation. They have to deal with the Undersea. So many things to do in so little time!

Overall, I loved this book so much. I cannot wait for the final installment to see how it ends.

Sidenote: Vivi needs to get her shit together. Telling Heather about faerie literally seconds before going there was not the right move. But I’m rooting for them.

[noona-clock]

iKonic Fairy Tales: Aladdin - Part 2

A modern fairy tale series in collaboration with @cramelot - stay tuned next week for the next story featuring a new member! ✨

Genre: Office!AU

Pairing: Hanbin x You

By Admin B

🧞 Part 1, 2, 3, 4

“Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho,” One chuckled as he stepped back from Hanbin, a more than satisfied smirk pulling at his lips. “You. Look. Incredible. If I do say so myself.”

When he stepped away from in front of the mirror, Hanbin almost jumped when he saw himself.

Hanbin’s typical wardrobe consisted of slightly worn-out jeans, lots of button-down shirts, sweatshirts, t-shirts... y’know. The kind of clothes he could actually afford.

But One had lent him an almost brand new, very well-fitted suit. A very shiny watch. And he’d combed his hair away from his forehead, a look he’d never actually tried before.

And... he had to admit.

He looked good.

You knew this whole party was for your benefit, but you still didn’t feel bad for hanging around the refreshments.

Because you were absolutely certain you would not meet your future spouse here tonight.

You honestly weren’t sure why your father thought you would because... well, he knew you.

He knew how independent and ambitious and career-focused you were. He knew being in a relationship was not quite the last thing on your list of priorities, but it was pretty far down there.

You gazed around the room as you popped another shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce into your mouth (you knew you wouldn’t be kissing anyone tonight, so what was the point in trying to keep your breath fresh?), your eyes searching for someone - anyone - you could talk to.

But... you knew nobody there.

Probably because you spent most of your time working instead of actually having a social life.

Just as you were reaching for another shrimp, though, you caught sight of...

Again, you didn’t know who he was because you didn’t know who anybody was, but...

Well, let’s just say you were intrigued enough to at least find out his name.

He was wearing a very well-fitted suit, and his dark hair was combed back, away from his forehead just the way you liked. (Yes, you didn’t have much of a social life, but you still knew how you liked a guy to style his hair, okay?) He looked somewhat nervous, but he also somehow looked confident and intelligent and sophisticated.

Before you could second guess yourself, you began to make your way over to him.

When you were about halfway to where he was standing, his eyes shifted and locked on yours. He immediately looked nervous, so you slowed your pace. You tended to have a bit of an authoritative walk which could probably be seen as intimidating; the last thing you wanted to do right now was to intimidate him. 

“Hi,” you greeted when you were close enough. You held out your hand, a soft, almost shy smile pulling at your lips. “I’m Y/N. I... don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“H-hi,” he stammered, shaking your hand and gulping anxiously. “I’m... I’m Hanbin.”

“Hanbin,” you repeated. It felt nice to say. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” he grinned.

And then you asked the typical question you asked anyone upon first meeting them: “What do you do?”

“I --” He paused for a few moments then continued on. “I’m... I founded an app. I’m the CEO -- or... whatever.”

“Oh, really?” you asked, intrigued. “Which one?”

“It’s, uh... it’s called Lamp.”

“Lamp,” you repeated, nodding slowly as you gazed at him in interest. “What’s the purpose?”

“It helps you determine if your house is running at peak efficiency, especially when it comes to the light bulbs you’re using,” he explained, seemingly becoming more comfortable. But you always did when you talked about your work, too.

“Oh, wow,” you gasped. “That’s really cool. I’m all about efficiency and being kind to the environment.”

“Well, of course,” he chuckled. “You work for AgriBar, the leader of eco-friendly alcohol.”

You paused, biting your lip to hold back a huge, goofy smile. “So... you know who I am.”

Hanbin’s eyes widened slightly, and his mouth opened and closed like a fish’s. “I -- I mean, I --”

“Do you like wine?”

“W--wine?” he stuttered.

“There’s this amazing wine we source. It’s made from a local vineyard about five miles away, grapes all organically grown... Do you want to try some?”

“I, um... I probably shouldn’t,” he chuckled awkwardly. “I drove here, so I -- I shouldn’t.”

Your eyebrows raised slightly, and you couldn’t help but be impressed. A man who respected the law and the safety of himself and others.

You instantly wanted to know more about him.

“So, would you like to... talk? Somewhere?” you asked a bit shyly.

Despite the surprised expression on his handsome face, Hanbin immediately answered, “Yeah. Yes. I would love to.”

It took you less than half an hour to decide you liked Hanbin.

Maybe not like that yet, but... you were definitely attracted to him. And very interested.

But besides his outward charm, he was very down-to-earth, extremely intelligent, and incredibly complex. He made you laugh, he made you think, he made you want to keep on talking to him.

When the party began to get too crowded and loud and stuffy, you suggested going for a walk outside. Hanbin agreed immediately, and your heart pounded as the two of you stepped through the doors.

You ended up where all the cars were parked, and you randomly remembered Hanbin saying he drove here tonight.

“Which one’s yours?” you asked, gazing out over the sea of Lexuses and BMWs and Audis and Teslas.

“Oh, umm... Th--that one,” he answered as he pointed to a jet black Nissan Leaf. “It’s nothing fancy, but Lamp is pretty small right now. And it’s electric, so easier on the Earth and my wallet.”

“Very commendable,” you grinned, nudging him a little with your shoulder. “I’ve actually never been in an electric car before. I usually take the bus or walk to work since I live pretty close by.”

“Really?” Hanbin asked, obviously surprised.

“Yes,” you chuckled. “I may be an ‘heiress’ but I’m not a spoiled, rich kid.”

“I -- I never said --”

“But you probably thought it.”

“...Actually, I was never really sure what to think about you. Besides the fact you’re --” He suddenly cut himself off, so of course you were dying to know what he’d been about to say.

“Besides the fact I’m what?” you asked with a smirk.

“Do you wanna go for a ride?”

Well, if his intention was to distract you, it worked. Tremendously.

“Ooh,” you gasped. “Yes, please!”

He fished his keys out of his pocket and led you over to his car, opening the passenger door for you once you got there.

“Do you get around the city much?” he asked after he took his spot in the driver’s seat.

“Honestly? ...No,” you blushed. “I’m too busy working, I’ll admit.”

“Good,” Hanbin grinned. “There’s a spot I’d like to show you. I go there when I want to clear my head or when I just want some peace and quiet.”

Aha. So he wanted some peace and quiet with you? That was a good sign.

“I would love to go there,” you said softly. You were tempted to reach over and take his hand, but 1) it was most likely too soon to make that move, and 2) he just put both his hands on the wheel as he began driving.

As Hanbin drove through the city, you had to admit you were thoroughly impressed with this car. You knew you sounded like a dork, but you couldn’t stop exclaiming about it.

Hanbin was blushing and constantly smiling and chuckling at your reaction, and that might have been a reason why you kept on going.

Because he was just so cute.

“Okay, where is this secret place of yours?” you asked after almost half an hour of driving.

“We’re almost there, I promise,” he assured you. “And I swear I’m not, like... driving you to some deserted spot to kill you.”

You were about to retort back with a teasing remark, but Hanbin spoke again before you could.

“Oh my god, that makes me sound like a creep. I am so sorry, I don’t know why I said that.”

“No, it’s fine,” you giggled. “You don’t seem like a creep. Trust me, I can spot one from a mile away. Especially guys who are only after me because I’m rich.”

But Hanbin was a CEO; even if he wasn’t as rich as you, he still wouldn’t be in need of more money. He was dressed nicely, and he drove a fairly nice car.

“Sometimes I just try to be funny and it comes out... dumb,” he chuckled.

“Hey, we all have our moments,” you assured him with a smirk.

“Okay, we’re here,” he announced, still looking a bit embarrassed. “Thank God.”

He stopped the car, and when you opened the door to get out, you saw he’d taken you up one of the small mountains along the border of the city. There was a scenic viewing area with benches, and Hanbin led you over to sit on one.

“Wow,” you breathed as you took in the lights of the city and the darkness of the sky sprinkled with twinkling stars. “This is... gorgeous. I can see why you’d want to come here to clear your head.”

You were both silent for a few moments, your eyes drinking in the peaceful view... but then Hanbin shifted, turning slightly toward you.

“Can I be honest?” he murmured, his voice just barely above a whisper.

“Of course,” you answered immediately. “I value honesty more than anything else.”

He paused, and you turned to look at him, your brow furrowed softly. He looked a bit nervous, so you wondered if he felt the same attraction as you did.

“I, um... Earlier. When I said I wasn’t sure what to think about you besides the fact you’re... What I was going to say was, ‘besides the fact you’re beautiful.’”

Your heart stopped momentarily, and you weren’t sure what to say in response...

So instead of saying anything you simply leaned in and - despite your shrimp breath - you kissed him.

Part 3

iKONic Fairy Tale Series: Aladdin | The Little Mermaid | Sleeping Beauty | Cinderella | Snow White | Rapunzel | Beauty & the Beast

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