#or perhaps i need an introduction post of some sort

[pleaseshootthejester]

Sys talk in tags

[kayrma]

See You At the Next Stop

Lily Evans meets a posh-looking bloke with messy hair on the way back to London, and for once in her life she actually enjoys a train ride. Maybe having a spontaneous seat partner isn't that bad after all.

Read on AO3 (2.9k words)

happy birthday, lily evans-potter! didn't have enough time to finish my punk!lily fic but i realized i never actually posted this fic from two years ago to tumblr so this is my contribution for today <3

Lily stared down the document in front of her, willing her brain to start writing words again. She had been on the train for nearly two hours now, travelling from Edinburgh to London. Visiting home had been yet another disaster, with Petunia continuing to judge Lily for moving to London after school and finding an inner-city job.  Her sister liked to say that Lily was wasting her money trying to live on her own (which was a lie, Lily had a lovely roommate named Mary), and that she’d be better off staying home and finding a husband. Sometimes, Lily thought Petunia was stuck in the nineteenth century, but she blamed most of that on her horrendous boyfriend Vernon, who worked for a drilling company or something else of the sort – it seemed far too boring to keep track of. 

Really, Lily had only gone home to visit their mum, following the two-year anniversary of her father’s death. His death had hit their family hard, despite them all knowing it was coming. Her father had suffered from cancer in his final years, but it still hurt knowing he was gone. Mr. Evans was Lily’s biggest supporter, encouraging her to attend Cambridge despite the monetary toll it would put on their family. He had helped her search for scholarships, and she ended up going to university for much lower than she ever could have expected without her father’s help. He was the one who helped her move to London, being there to help her move into her tiny flat despite him slowly growing weaker. She missed him every day, and she missed her mum, but she needed to be back in the city for work tomorrow.

Snapping out of her painful memories, Lily looked back at the half-empty document, with only a title and an introduction on it, not even in Times New Roman yet. She switched the font, the Arial irritating her, and leaned back into her seat. Even though she was on the high-speed rail, the train ride had felt impossibly long. She was seated next to some messy-haired Indian bloke, his glasses on top of his head and earbuds plugged in as he typed away on his own laptop. The man was gorgeous, to say the least, especially since he had unbuttoned the top collar of his dress shirt, and was wearing Converse with his slacks. Really, she couldn’t not admire him. Lily had a personal policy of not sitting next to men if she could avoid it, but he looked around her age and seemed relatively unassuming when he got on at Newcastle about an hour after her, and Lily found herself unable to say no. A part of Lily had wanted to ask him for his name, to know more about him, but he seemed to be a little bit of a mess as he got on the train. All he offered her was an apologetic smile as he struggled to shove his duffel into the overhead compartment as the train started moving. She smiled back at him, perhaps a little too eagerly in comparison to his semi-grimace. He had rolled up his sleeves as he sat down, and what was Lily supposed to do but stare at his well-defined tan forearms? He probably worked in some posh company, considering his attire (not that Lily could judge, she was still wearing business casual as well). Any time she peeked over at his laptop, he was typing furiously into some form of sheets that she truly could not decipher no matter how much she wanted to try. Looking away from him and turning her attention back to her own laptop, her brain felt like it was about to melt. 

Deciding to take a break, Lily closed her laptop, ridding her mind of thoughts about her struggling article. She pulled out her phone, and seeing that her plan was about to run out for the month, she started to play some silly game that didn’t require any data. At that moment, the messy-haired bloke looked over, saying “Oh, I love that game!”

He had said it extremely loud, presumably because he was blasting music in his earbuds, but Lily laughed and turned towards him.

“Really? All my mates make fun of me for playing it – what level are you on?”

“Oh, don’t worry, my mates do the same. They say it’s because I still act like a ‘bloody child’ but I think I just enjoy a bit of mindless fun, y’know?”

Lily nodded, glad to see that she had something in common with the gorgeous bloke. He hadn’t told her what level he was on, but his smile and enthusiasm more than made up for it.

“Regardless, I’ll let you get back to the game, this project might be the death of me.”

She slumped back as gracefully as she could, disappointed that he was busy, but she shot him another smile and went back to playing her silly little game. After exhausting her thumbs, she genuinely felt like she had lost brain cells, choosing to just put away her phone and relax with some music. Putting her head against the seat, she closed her eyes and tried to stop thinking entirely. However, no matter how much she tried to empty her mind, the bloke next to her kept popping into her mind. She ended up just embracing it, allowing her mind to fill with thoughts of who he could possibly be as she felt herself drifting off into sleep. 

Lily had no idea when she woke up, but she felt an impossible crick in her neck as she opened up her eyes. Quickly checking her watch for the time, she realized she had only been asleep for a little over half an hour, and sighed in relief – she’d still have time to try and work on her article again. However, as she tried to get up, she realized there was a weight on top of her head. Glancing upwards, she realized she had fallen asleep on the bloke’s shoulder, and he was leaning back on top of her head as his hands were stilled on his laptop. His shoulders were sturdy and broad, and Lily thought that she wouldn’t mind staying there forever. Not wanting to disturb him as he seemed utterly relaxed, Lily stayed put, hoping he’d wake up soon. 

After a few minutes (that felt like a lovely forever), his head lifted off of hers, and she took the opportunity to escape. Before she could even look at him, she heard the sound of his neck cracking as he stretched it, and Lily’s jaw dropped wide open. 

“That sounded like it hurt,” she commented discreetly, hoping he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. 

He smiled at her, glasses almost slipping off his nose now, rather than tangled in his messy hair. Shaking his head, he said “I always do it to wake myself up, it feels rather good actually.” The bloke proceeded to crack each one of his knuckles, and then his wrist. Lily grimaced at the noise, but couldn’t help herself from laughing. She figured she should probably apologize to him for falling asleep on him, even though she didn’t know how she ended up on his shoulder. 

“I’m Lily, by the way. Sorry I fell asleep on you. I’ve been working on an article and my brain genuinely felt like it might have melted if I hadn’t taken a break.”

“No worries Lily, it’s lovely to meet you,” he stuck out his hand, “Potter. James Potter.”

“Bond-like, are we?” Lily took his hand and gave him a firm handshake, trying to put on as serious of a face as she could in order to mirror his own expression. 

“Of course, milady Evans. What takes you to London this fine weekend?”

“Why Mr. Potter, I’m heading back to work. I visited my mum in Edinburgh, and I’ve got a roommate and a flat and a job to get back to tomorrow.”

“Is that so?” James flashed a smirk that would have brought her to her knees if she hadn’t already been sitting down. “Well Evans, I’ve just done the same, except that I visited my mum and dad in Newcastle, and am heading back to the flat I share with my brother and our friends, and a job as well.”

Lily giggled, of all things, and looked down to realize that their hands were still intertwined from when he had reached out to shake them. She dropped it before she could get too flustered, and tried not to notice the disappointed look on James’ face. 

“Right then, Potter, where do you work? I’d bet it’s somewhere posh, with the clothing you’re wearing and those sheets you were typing away on.”

Clearly surprised she had noticed, James’ quick reaction gave away that she seemed to have gotten everything right.

“Stalking me already Evans? And then falling asleep on me? Have you got some sort of ploy going on here, an evil scheme or whatnot?”

“Oh of course, I’m a journalist for The Daily Prophet, you see, and you’re the subject of my next story. James Potter: The Posh Bloke with Messy Hair and Unfinished Work.”

James let out a loud laugh at that, startling the other people in the full cabin. They all seemed to glare at him, despite his laugh being perfectly beautiful in her opinion.  He raised a thick eyebrow, questioning her with just that one expression.

“Alright, well you’re not the subject of my next article Potter, sorry to disappoint. But I do really work for The Daily Prophet, and I’m afraid I’m the one with unfinished work seeing as my article’s barely hit a page yet.”

“And you’re sure it can’t be about me? My messy hair just won’t do for The Prophet?”

“Afraid not, sorry, unless you’ve got a secret as to how you manage to keep it that messy. You’ve run your hands through it more than I can count in just the time we’ve been talking, and it’s not shown a single sign of being tamed.”

“Well Evans, I suppose I’ll let you in on a secret then.” He leaned in close to her, his lips almost brushing her ear as his breath made her shudder. “My dad’s actually the creator of Sleakeazy’s Hair Products, and I refuse to use it out of principle.”

Lily’s head snapped around so quickly it nearly gave her whiplash. She looked at James with an incredulous look on her face – there was no way he was telling the truth. But his face looked so earnest, completely devoid of his teasing demeanor, and Lily ended up just staring at him in bafflement. He snickered as she continued to stare him down, and his hands went right back up to muss up his hair.

“Yeah, I know. My brother ended up with the good hair genes, considering Sleakeazy’s has never really been able to do much for me anyways. Well, he’s not really my brother, we took him in after he ran away from his shitty family, but he’s my brother in everything but blood.”

James seemed like he was about to continue rambling, almost like his mouth was moving quicker than his brain. Lily reached out to put her hand on his wrist, but whether she did it to calm him down or for her own benefit, she didn’t quite know. 

“That’s really sweet of you and your family, James,” she gave him a small smile, “You’re clearly of the good sort. Maybe I will write my article about you after all. James Potter: A Bloke with Messy Hair and a Penchant for Being a Good Person.”

“All that from a bit of rambling, eh, Evans?” He was evidently smug, happy with the perception he’d given of himself. Something about his smirk made Lily want to wipe it clean off his face with a kiss, but it was far too early and far too public of an area to do that. Instead, she humored him with a laugh, and pulled her laptop out of her bag. 

Opening a new document, she enlarged the font into the awful old-Gothic newspaper style that came preloaded, and wrote up all the silly titles she’d come up with today. James reached for it slowly, wordlessly asking permission to take her laptop. She nodded and passed it to him, curious to see what he’d possibly type. He deleted all the words she’d put in, and changed the font to fucking Lobster, of all things, and then turned the laptop away from her. James seemed to be taking his time to think about what he was about to type, mussing up his hair yet again. After a minute or so of anticipation, he turned the laptop back to her, and it read: “James Potter: A Bloke with Messy Hair Who’d Like to Take One Lily Evans on a Date.”

Lily gave him what might have been the goofiest grin of all time, snatched back her laptop, changed the font to a respectable Times, enlarged it, and wrote in “Yes” so that it would fill up the page. James smiled back at her with the same reckless abandon, and leaned over to hold her hand. And then the computer nearly slipped off her lap.

They both reached for it, knocking heads in the process, but managed to save it from a horrific death on the train (she was a journalist, she needed to make use of her sensationalizing skills sometimes), and they both started laughing. They kept going even as she quickly put her laptop back in its bag. The passengers around them were definitely staring at them with irritation now, but that meant nothing to her if it meant seeing James’ smile. She leaned back into him and grabbed his hand to hold it properly this time, looking up at him like she could ravish him right there. He stared back at her with the same dark look in her eyes, and kissed her forehead and her nose. 

God, this boy and his ability to make her giggle. She whispered, “If you’d like to kiss me, you can just do it, y’know?”

He leaned in for a chaste kiss, “Right, but if I kissed you like I wanted to right now, we’d probably get a complaint for public indecency. Besides, it’s just another half hour to London, and my flat’s not too far from the station.” And then he winked at her. Lily gaped at him with an open mouth, and James pushed it back closed after a beat, saying “Don’t catch any flies in there, love.” Truly, James Potter was an enigma she could write an article on. 

“Well, I suppose I’ll get back to writing my article then. It seems I might be busy after we get off this train.” 

James stared her down as she pulled her laptop back out of its back, tied up her hair, and for extra flair, picked his glasses off his head and put them on. 

“Fuck, nevermind, you’re blind as a bat, Potter,” Lily blinked furiously, and shoved them back onto his face. James ruffled his hair (of course he did), and reopened his own work. Before he started working though, he reached over and pulled her closer to him, so much so that she was nearly on his lap, and then took his arm right back away once she was squished into him. Embracing the position, Lily opened a new document, abandoning the pages she had previously written, deciding that her next article would just have to be about something more lighthearted than the current foreign affairs of the UK government; her boss Minerva could probably appreciate some good news anyway. Pulling up the notes of an old interview she had done. Finally finding a rhythm as she typed away, Lily was startled by the “London, next stop!” that blared over the train’s PA system. She glanced over at James, who seemed just as rattled, and they both put their things away in unison. As everyone else on the trains stood from their seats to take their luggage, James immediately bumped his head as he got up.

“Bloody hell, these have no right being so low,” He grumbled as he stretched out and reached for his duffel.

“Sure you won’t need help with your bag this time, Potter?” Lily felt the need to tease him, just to humble him with her first impression of him from when he boarded the train. As if to prove a point, James swiped her bag off the overhead carry bin as well, and held on to both of them as the cabin started to clear out. Lily did a final check of their seats, and lightly jogged to follow him out.

“Well Potter, I recall you saying your flat wasn’t too far from the station. Are you planning on making good on that?”

“Of course Evans, what kind of man do you take me for? I’ll have you know I don’t put out on the first date though, I’ll be making you food since my flat’s got a stellar kitchen.” She raised an eyebrow at him, willing him to continue, because she wanted to know what he could possibly be making for her. “My mum’s aloo tikki recipe, I think you’ll like it.”

“This feels like a dig at me for being half-Irish, but I never mentioned that, so I’ll accept it. I look forward to seeing your cooking skills since you’ve got the sort of hair that would catch on fire in a kitchen.”

James gave her that stunning smile again, and grabbed her hand as they walked out of the station, and on the way to his flat. Lily had a good feeling about this bloke with messy hair and enough charm to create a whole new world.

[kopfkino-o]

it's been a minute since i did some theory rambling and i've got a long train ride ahead of me so let's get at it! this is more of a general elain post but there is some pro elriel thinking sprinkled in. thanks for reading!!

was Elain blessed by the Mother so she might cure the corrupted Cauldron? are there two primordial forces warring within it? does Elain have the power of Life? bear with me while i ramble about all this.

warning: the following thoughts probably aren't cohesive lol.

okay but does anyone else think that there's a small part of the Mother, the original creator, left within the Cauldron and that's what recognized and loved Elain? Like a part of me thinks that some aspect of the Mother remains locked away or maybe weakened by what the Asteri did to the Cauldron that recognized the inherent goodness in Elain and that's why she was "blessed."

What if the last lingering ember of the Mother's will recognized Elain's gentle heart, her brave soul, and gifted her with the power to break the corruption and restore the order of things?

"Her gaze shifted to the carved wooden rose she’d placed upon the mantel, half-hidden in the shadows beside a figurine of a supple-bodied female, her upraised arms clasping a full moon between them. Some sort of primal goddess—perhaps even the Mother herself. Nesta hadn’t let herself dwell on why she’d felt the need to set the rose there." - ACOSF, as told from Nesta's point of view.

SARAH, GIRL I SEE YOU!!!

We know that Elain is associated with roses from the description of her drawer, her love of gardening, from Feyre telling us that Elain would trim the roses without gloves and get thorns in her hands, amongst other associations. Nesta placing a symbol associated with Elain next to this primordial goddess figurine, PERHAPS EVEN THE MOTHER HERSELF, feels just so...prophetic. It's like Nesta is almost passing the mantle of being the storyteller or the FMC on to Elain. And maybe even hinting at what's to come.

BLESSID. BELOVED. BENEVOLENT.

Okay. So back to the Cauldron, the Mother, all that. We know Nesta took something from the Cauldron (but this is a post for another day) and that Elain was given something. We know that Elain is a seer, blessed with the gift of foresight and clairvoyance, though we don't exactly know what the innerworkings of this sort of magic are.

But what if Sight wasn't the only gift Elain was given?

My theory is that Elain was given the gift of Life by the remaining aspect of the Mother to counter/compliment the power of Death Nesta stole from the corrupted aspect of the Cauldron--or the power of the Asteri, which I think might also be the power of Deanna from the Throne of Glass World (but again, that's a post for another day). And I can't help but think that, for the gentler grower of things, this theorized "Life magic" would manifest in the form of earth/soil/plant manipulation. We saw this in HOFAS with the official introduction of earth based magic and it has me thinking!!

And with that thinking, I'm wondering if the lingering essence of the Mother might have blessed Elain with these powers in the hopes that she would be able to master them, in the same way the Nesta mastered the power she claimed, and help finally banish the corruption from the force of the Cauldron. I've got a little headcanon that all three sisters will have some role in this but it needs to stew a bit more lol. And what if Elain's bond has some roll in all of this?

A THREAD TIDED TO A RIB

I don't want to speak for everyone, but to me there's something off about Lucien and Elain's bond. He is able to live far away from her with seemingly no issue. She shrinks into herself when he's around. Lucien just seems...sad whenever the bond is mentioned. Could this be the result of the same awkward/push-pull tension that we saw between Nessian and Feysand? Maybe.

But what if it's because SJM Is using them to show us what a "Cauldron-given bond" looks like? Rhys theorizes about the bonds in ACOWAR and brings up a very interesting comment:

"There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

IM SORRY BUT IS THAT NOT SARAH SCREAMING AT US?

Sometimes the bond picks poorly! She gives us TWO examples of this with Rhys's and Tam's parents. Two bonds that I think were CAULDRON GIVEN bonds. Then, as a foil to this, she gives us Nessian and Feysand. Vivienne and Kallias. Three bonds gifted by the Mother--the primordial being, the gentle creator of things. Could this be Silba from the TOG world? Kythona from Crescent City? Is she Wyrd? And could the Mother have given both Elain and Lucien other bonds--blessed bonds--that are currently being surpressed by the corrupted bonds bestowed on them by the Cauldron?

Personally (and especially after HOFAS) I think the Cauldron's corruption needs to be addressed. And I think Elain is the one to do it. Her entire character is steeped in themes of choice, fate vs freewill, destiny vs self-actualization, and gods, the set up for an AMAZING story is right there.

TO CLOSE THIS MADNESS OUT

I can't say what SJM will do in the end. But I can theorize based on the last few books and the foreshadowing she's lain. And for me, I see the angsty, unprecedented chosen love story she's building between Elain and Azriel with a rejected mating bond incorporated into the heart of their love story. Could she change the direction of her books and abandon this? Absolutely. But I think the story would be so much worse for it. The crumbs for something amazing are there. The crumbs for something that has the potential to be genre-defying is there. And based on what Sarah commented to the Times, I can't help but she's knows this and can't help but write it.

ok bye thanks for reading!! i'd love to talk more about this to anyone else who is down to yap! dms are always open.

[steveguyhi1243]

Summer Triangle Chapter 18

It couldn’t have been him. 

“Pacifica, keep your head up, dear,” Father ordered, “People can still see us.”

“You put in tinted windows,” Pacifica replied, “I don’t think they can.”

“It’s good training.”

Pacifica sighed as she leaned back against the rigid leather of the backseat. Her beach dress flowed uncomfortably with the air conditioning of the limousine, the fabric rubbing against her skin like nails on a chalkboard. The skin on her shoulders fought each movement. Soft white patches had been left behind in the wake of a nasty sunburn. Mother and Father would surely scold her for that later. She probably hadn’t been holding her head high enough, or standing straight enough, or had shown too much skin, or maybe not enough. 

What was the point of a beach trip if they weren’t going to go to the beach? All they had done was spend the day meeting with Dollarsmore representatives on their yacht, feasting on expensive shrimp and patting each other on the back on how they were the kings of everything. It was exhausting. Money was the center of their world. The sun rose and set with the closing of the markets. 

At one point, she had stood at the edge of the yacht, almost drawn in by the crystal-clear water and sweltering temperatures. A little swim wouldn’t have hurt. She had dared to ask her parents for permission to break away, only to be taken into the lower cabin and lectured until her ears rang. That would be the last time she bothered asking for permission. Father had threatened to take out the bell. Pacifica should have thrown him overboard. 

Her monotonous day had been broken up by a single face, one that she had only seen during her last few minutes on the beach. One that unmistakably belonged to Dipper Pines.

Any doubt that had remained after her sighting at the funeral was gone. Luckily, Dipper wasn’t one to change his appearance, with changes only showing in his height and facial hair. He still had that dorky walk and confusion in his eye, like a deer in headlights. 

She had meant to wave. To give some sort of introduction and prove that she was still around, if Dipper even remembered who she was. Six long years had passed since their last visit. What if he wanted nothing to do with her? Surely he had heard about what had happened to McGucket and the mansion. How would he forgive her for letting something like that happen? For not slapping her parents in the face until they saw value in people beyond their net worth.

“Honey,” Father said to mother in the front seat, “Remind me to polish my checkbook when I get back. Don’t want it to look like a poor person’s.”

Mother laughed, a posh laugh where she covered her mouth and announced every vowel, “Oh, of course, Preston.”

Pacifica threw up a little bit in her mouth. 

The limousine, yacht in tow, wasn’t taking her home. Pacifica was a hostage, headed back to her golden prison, with all of the amenities that money could buy, but none of the autonomy that she so desperately desired. She could eat any food in the world, drive any car, and go to any school, and there she was, an observer to her own life. 

Perhaps a dork mystery-solver was just what she needed. Out of everyone in her life, past and present, Dipper Pines had been the only one to effectively stand up to her parents and tell them off for the rich shams that they were. She wished she had left him with more than a hug, something that showed more appreciation, like money. It wasn’t like her parents would miss any of it. 

For a moment, she contemplated throwing open the door to the backseat and rolling into the wilderness, running into the dark until her family could no longer find her, far away from anyone that would try and look. She knew that even if she mustered up the courage, it wouldn't last, with missing posters going up in seconds and bounties in the millions of dollars posted in her name. They would find a way to frame a random poor person and toss them in jail. The Northwests would never be able to accept that one of their own would forsake the name. 

“Awfully quiet back there, Pacifica,” Mother remarked, “We’ll have to work on that. You have to be more outgoing. Both here and on the yacht. Can’t have our executives thinking that you don’t like them.”

“And if I don’t?” Pacifica asked.

“Oh, nonsense. You love them just like we do.”

If eyes could roll out of one’s head, Pacifica would be blind and bleeding on the floor.

AO3 Link

[valjeancrazylover2]

A little introduction to Marius' new group of friends

Sorry to the Amis fans out there - but i've given Marius a new group of friends cause I felt bad for him. He does sort of... lose ALL of them on the barricade, and I had to give him SOMETHING to do once he recovered ... so i just made him some new friends (with the help of the genius mind of @24601orwhatever SHOUTOUT!!!) so hes not lonely.

Admittedly, one of them IS technically a character in the musical. None other than Jordan Simon Pollard's very own Gérard (he told me the name of the character when i asked, for which i am forever grateful. I've just taken him, given him a surname and expanded on whatever personality he displays in the musical. There are benefits to eagle-eyeing the ensemble in company scenes!!)

As a sort of .. i suppose Teaser? for my next fanfic due to come out (which was originally plotted as a chapter for the wrestling fanfic, but is now its own thing because of how off-topic it got), here's the section i have written in the fic which introduce these weirdos. These might not end up being the final versions, as I'll probably tweak bits here and there.. I've also attached the drawings i did not too long ago.

I'd love to hear any questions/assumptions, and additionally if anyone else has made a les mis OC to give marius a friend post-barricade? The boy's lonely, he needs them, I want to hear.

(Under the cut, since this is long)

~

First, there was François-Michel Dolosa. He was meek - not entirely suited to the bar, Marius thought - but he had a kind heart. Marius had seen the man, about half a head shorter than him, struggling to carry a large pile of books and offered to help, and the conversation between them began when he saw that half the pile was about various native birds. Along the span of the afternoon, of which was spent talking amiably with François, he noticed more bird motifs about his person. His waistcoat was adorned with beautiful tree-like embroidery, with birds atop their branches; his watch was engraved, with a small bird charm on his fob.

Marius had noticed but did not comment on the fact that François did not seem to be of a very wealthy standing, contrary to what his jewellery might have suggested. He reminded Marius of himself, before he had been married, living in that dingy apartment.  There were many difficult memories now tied to that place, but perhaps that is why he had found himself drawn to François. 

The next to come along had been Réne Gignac, an excitable young gentleman, who could always manage to stick his nose into someone else’s business. That was indeed how he had been introduced to Marius and François, when they had been discussing their families in their claimed table of the library. His demeanour was certainly enchanting, like he would have much liked to be a peacock, and his eyes shone with intrigue whenever he sensed the opportunity to inquire about your personal life.

He, unlike François, was clearly of good money, and seemed that he was studying law simply for something to do, and because it provided him with a sort of higher-class gossip. It was surprising, then, when Marius discovered that he was in fact a very competent student. 

René was also of great contrast to Marius and François in that he liked to make a scene, never one to be quiet, always talking to whoever happened to walk by where the three of them were sitting and they’d leave him with their life story. 

Marius supposed the reason why René had stuck to their small group was because he had elected Marius to be his ‘project’, to say. There was a lot about his life that Marius knew he must keep private, as being involved in an insurrection definitely did not look good for any chances of employment - he had enough trouble as it was with people inquiring about where the faint scars on his face had come from. For Monsieur Gignac, the plea of clumsiness did not satisfy, and so he stuck to Marius and by extension, François - who he enjoyed hearing facts about local birds from.

The fourth in the group had not made his own way into the company, but rather it was René’s habit of chatter that had dragged along Gérard Ambroise.

Gérard was an interesting person, to put it lightly. He reminded Marius somewhat of Javert, in that he was uptight and loved to argue, which explained the choice of career, as well as his passion for the public and the lowerclassmen. That was less like Javert, but certainly more like his previous group of friends.

Something about the similarity unsettled him, with the added fact that something about Gérard seemed familiar. He even bore a scar which looked fresh enough to have been open in the past year, but no less. No, it was too much of a coincidence. Marius would have remembered him if he was a friend, and certainly a person such as him.

He and René certainly made a pair, with Gérard’s rigid politics often clashing against René’s more blithe attitude, leading to Gérard hissing an argument until his face went red, received only by a shrug from the shorter man, which then infuriated him even more. René seemed to purposefully provoke him, seeking some sort of entertainment in seeing Gérard huff an agitated Well! and spout his opinions until his entire manifesto had been represented.

Marius knew René to be a genuinely cordial man, with enough chatter to speak for the entire group, always interested and attentive, so this behaviour was strange. 

Strangest of all, it was clear that René infuriated Gérard, so why Gérard bothered to stick around with a crowd he seemed to think himself better than was unclear. Though he did have his bouts of pleasantry - usually when politics was not in the equation. However, it seemed hard for him to avoid the topic, so these moments were not as frequent as what people would have usually liked in a friend.

It wasn’t that Marius disagreed with his points, in fact he agreed with him on many of them, but surely he could enjoy more pleasant conversation? At least he would listen attentively to François’ reports on the local bird population he had been observing that week, as they all did.

The commotion of this group of four attracted the attention of another student, the fifth and final member, a Monsieur Albéric Jean-Pierre Lafitte.

He was an average man, mild, good-natured and good-mannered, the kind of attitude that came from modest money, not quite old enough to have earned him a title or to have seen his family fall in the Revolution. He was the kind that followed in his father’s steps into law, not out of particular interest but because he knew nothing else, and of his life he had been expecting nothing else. While he did not seem to mind this - in fact, he seemed to have a very promising career in front of him - he seemed bored.

Marius thought that this was most certainly the reason he had ended up in this queer yet close circle. He often acted as the judge-umpire to the arguments of Gérard and René, like he counted it as practice for court. With Gérard’s staunch attitudes and René’s deliberate, feigned ignorance, Marius did not blame Albéric for taking them as a sort of case study.

~

And thats about it. More character details, including some physical descriptions, will probably come later in the text? (I can't decide if physical descriptions would fit into the above passage very well). The plot of the fic is a dinner party, so they will all get a chance to shine beside their friend Marius, with Cosette, Valjean, Javert and Gillenormand thrown into the mix. It's a disaster waiting to happen.

[la-cosmonauta-extraterrestre]

How to learn physics as an adult

I'm creating this post in response to some posts @un-ionizetheradlab made the other day, but I'm creating this as a guide to anyone this is relevant for. It's going to be a long post, but pick and choose what to do from this list based on what works for you and what your goals are, whether it's just to gain basic scientific literacy or become a physicist (or something in between). Also remember that it's a journey not a sprint, so it's ok if you don't understand physics at first (and if it makes you feel better, physics was one of my worst subjects in school and now I have a master's degree in physics). Without further ado:

First Thing's First

There are some mathematical methods you need to learn to understand physics; there's no way around this:

Vectors: This is the most important thing to learn for physics, how to use vectors. It seemed every mathematics or physics class I took in my first year of my physics degree started with an introduction to vectors, and for good reason. You can learn about how vectors work on Khan Academy for free.

Matrices and Tensors: Once you've mastered vectors, learn about matrices and linear algebra, and perhaps go on to learning about tensors once you're at it. You can at least get the basics about matrices from Khan Academy, but you might want to invest in a linear algebra textbook.

Calculus: I said vectors are the most important thing to learn for physics, but it actually might be calculus. If you have absolutely no previous knowledge of calculus, you can watch the video "Calculus at a Fifth Grade Level" on YouTube; it's a little more advanced than fifth grade level but can give you a good feel for what calculus is about. Once you've done that, there are multiple calculus courses available on Khan Academy. There's also a calculus course available on Brilliant, but it might only be available through the paid version.

Ordinary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems: You don't need to learn these right away, but if you want to do physics at the upper undergraduate level, you'll need to learn these at some point.

2. Learning to Think Like a Scientist

Some suggestions of apps and things to watch if you don't know much about science so you can start thinking like a scientist:

SciShow: If you don't know much science at all, SciShow on YouTube is a good place to start, I used to watch it and as I recall it's more focused on life sciences but there's some physics videos there, too.

Ciencias De La Ciencia: This is sort of a Spanish version of SciShow but it's more physics-focused. At least some of the videos have subtitles if you don't know Spanish.

Cosmos: If you haven't seen Cosmos (either the old version with Carl Sagan or the new version with Neil DeGrasse Tyson), it's very good and at least some of the episodes are available for free online. It's more pop-science and history of science than actual science content, but at least they make a point of using anecdotes from the history of science to illustrate how the scientific method works.

Sabine Hossenfelder: Highly recommend her YouTube channel; she's one of the most intellectually honest scientific communicators in the world nowadays. Her videos are a good illustration of how to think like a scientist. She also has a blog and has written a few books.

Brilliant: This is an app with mathematics and science courses that places an emphasis on problem-solving. Most of the courses are only available on the paid version of the app (but you should be able to get a discount on it if you're subscribed to any mainstream science YouTubers), but even the free version gives you access to a few courses, plus a forum where people post problems. I had this app back in the day and liked solving problems on the forum (no idea if it's changed since then).

3. Books to Study

If you're committed to learning physics you should study from some textbooks:

Physics LibreTexts: This is a whole collection of university-level physics textbooks for free online. It's an invaluable resource for learning physics. Use it to learn classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, modern physics (but don't jump into quantum mechanics straight away if you're just starting out in physics).

Landau and Lifshitz Course of Theoretical Physics: This was the physics school curriculum in the Soviet Union; it's a little dated now but if you're just learning the basics it can't be beat given the excellent pedagogy. It's easy enough to find copies of it online, especially on Russian sites. Most if not all of the textbooks in the series have been translated into English, but if you know any Russian, the original is easy to follow.

Introduction to Electrodynamics by David J. Griffiths: Once you've learned mechanics, modern physics and some electricity and magnetism get yourself a copy of this textbook; you can get used editions on Amazon for a reasonable enough price. American physics majors are obsessed with this textbook, refer to it as the Bible, and for good reason.

Every Life is on Fire by Jeremy England: This isn't a textbook, but reading it took me back to my statistical mechanics class and it's way more readable than any actual statmech textbook so if you are interested in learning statmech, this book is a good start. It's actually a general reading book about England's ideas about the origin of life, interspersed with some parallels to the Hebrew Bible because England is also a rabbi. He actually has some interesting ideas about the philosophy of science, though they can be difficult to get behind, so if you're interested go listen to a podcast where they interview him (obligatory I don't condone the Kahaneist politics he sometimes promotes).

4. Learn About Research and Experiments

Physics is an experimental science, so expose yourself to some experiments:

Look for PDFs of high school physics labs online. You can find some for free and it should be cheap enough to do the experiments at home.

Read scientific papers on topics that interest you to try and understand what's happening today. If you find them difficult to understand, try reading older papers and go from there, for example, in undergrad I did a research internship relating to neutron stars, but I found some of the recent scientific papers difficult to understand, but reading the 1938 paper "On Massive Neutron Cores" by Oppenheimer and Volkoff helped me to understand neutron stars better. (When I returned to some of those same papers during my master's degree, I was proud to have understood them well.)

5. Take University-Level Physics Courses

You can take university-level physics courses without committing to a degree:

Search online for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). You can find MOOCs on multiple sites about many physics topics, and they're often free (sometimes you have to pay for them).

If you live in the United States, you can take physics classes at your local community college.

You can enroll in online physics courses through Open University, based in London but you can take the courses from anywhere. It's expensive, but you pay by the credit so you don't have to pay for a whole year of tuition if you're just taking one course.

If you happen to have free time in the summer and the money for it, many American universities (and elite British universities) offer summer courses that one can enroll in even if they don't attend the university. These are usually in-person classes.

6. Get a Physics Degree

Getting a physics degree is ultimately the only course of action if you've decided to become a physicist, the recommended course of action if you're ultimate goal is a PhD in the history of science or philosophy of science, and a good idea if learning physics has made you want a career in science communication of science education. There's no shame in being a non-traditional age student; in both my bachelor's and master's degree in physics I knew students who were non-traditional age. The downside of this is that it's a bad financial decision to get a degree, especially if it's a second bachelor's degree, but there are ways to lessen the financial burden of a degree:

If you attend an American university with American tuition, you can usually get an on-campus job, though that's pocket change compared to the costs of tuition.

On the bright side, if you already have a bachelor's degree you can probably get credit for general requirements at American universities, so a second bachelor's degree in physics might not take long.

You can also do a part-time degree while you work at many universities.

Just some general advice, if you go the American university route go to a university with a Society of Physics Students and get a student membership in American Physical Society; you get all kinds of benefits like access to Physics Today magazine, scholarships, internships, conferences, an honour society induction.

All that said, it's difficult to attend an American university without losing money. For that matter it's difficult to attend any university in the world without losing money, but you can lessen that burden by going to a country where university is cheaper. There the limiting factor is going to be language; although English is the international language of physics and the medium of most postgraduate physics degrees around the world, physics bachelor's degrees are usually in the local language. Some possible exceptions I found to this, for those who are not fluent in a language other than English:

Apparently there are world-class English-medium physics degree programmes in France? I figure there must be some kind of catch given the way the French are about their language, but given the high research output France has in physics, this is worth getting into.

There are English-medium physics bachelor's degrees in the Czech Republic, and tuition there is pretty affordable (for the English-language degrees; it's free for Czech-language degrees if you happen to be fluent in Czech). I don't know Czechia to have a lot of physics research output today, but back in the day Prague was a major centre of scientific research (Einstein briefly lived and worked as a physics professor in Prague), so it you're goal is to do a PhD in the history of science...I'm just gonna say that there's an English-medium physics bachelor's degree programme at Charles University and you'd have time when you're not studying to explore the city and it's history (but you should learn some Czech if you're going to live there).

University degrees in South Africa are usually English-medium, and tuition there is pretty affordable. There's also a fair amount of research output from South African universities. (Though I understand not wanting to live in South Africa.)

[angel-of-hunky-doryness]

Disney's Hercules: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Inaccuracies

Ah Disney's Hercules.

Now I'm sure I've made it no secret that this is one of my all time favorite movies. Both for it's witty charm and impressive character design, there is something to be said about this film that makes it stand out among the line-up of Disney's Renaissance films. It's not one of it's finest, nor is it your classic fairy tale movie up there with the likes of Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin, but just like Lion King, Hercules takes a unique spin on a timeless tale for a more modern audience.

Perhaps my love of this movie and other Disney films are biased. We had quite a lot of these movies on VHS and since I was still learning english, they were a great introduction before I started kindergarten.

Now as I watch these movies again I'm still surprised how well these movies have aged. I recently rewatched B&B with my dad the other day from flipping channels and even he was blown away with how good these movies really are after nearly 2 decades of not seeing them. It's astounding especially now in an age where we have started to see a decline in the quality of Disney movies. Back when there was a greater focus on art instead of profit.

While there was a rise in harsh criticism on Disney movies and their protagonists(like Snow White, Cinderella, etc) primarily in the 2010's that was perpetuated by internet culture (i.e. memes, Youtube critics, pick your poison) I am glad to see that we are starting to dial it down again and see just how progressive many of these movies were for their day and age.

Now this post isn't about any of that.

There are much better blogs here on tumblr that go into that, so I highly recommend @marciabrady, @artist-issues for their look at early Disney princesses and other similar blogs I will hopefully tag before I post this.

There is one movie though that kinda got the worst treatment and that is, to no one's surprise, Disney's Hercules.

And it's kind of deserved.

Now I'm not here to cast stones. Like I said in the preamble, it's one of my favorite movies and I've written quite a bit of fanfiction in this fandom. So I've done it dirty quite a lot. Sorry HS me, we need to talk a bit.

So instead, we will be going over why the inconsistent depiction of the Greek Mythology presented in this film had to be done and some small examples. Nothing too deep. The Mythology Guy on YouTube made a great video going over all the inaccuracies in the film and I highly recommend giving it a watch if you are interested in learning more about the Greek myth of Herakles.

With that out of the way, let's get started.

Part I: Child-Proofing

As I've mentioned before in one of my earlier posts, Disney films are made for children. Now that doesn't mean adults can't enjoy it, but the content within the films are primarily so children can watch and enjoy. Sure there are adult jokes and themes that will go over kid's heads, but they are generally pretty minor or toned down enough that can pass the films off as rated G/PG.

After all, Disney films have very easy and digestible morals: true beauty lies on the inside, don't judge people on their background, follow your dreams but don't lose sight on what's important, don't talk to strangers unless they're hot, invite everyone to the christening- things like that.

Disney films for the longest time have been a sort of moral standard since they have such a big influence on Western culture. Because of that, many fairy tales they have made films about tend to throw out some of the more grim and dark details attached to these tales.

Take Cinderella.

In the original Grimm's Fairy Tale, the happy couple ride off into the sunset while her step-sisters get their eyes plucked out by Cinderella's birds. In fact, before that, the step-sister's lopped off bits of their foot to try and fit into the glass slipper, only to be found out as the slipper gets soaked in blood.

Now I don't know about y'all, but I don't see anyone complaining that Disney left out those details. Okay, well the general consensus, at least.

But Cinderella is a classic fairy tale that had many adaptations and versions from across the world that allowed Disney to pull inspiration from, so who cares that they didn't follow the Brothers Grimm line-by-line?

And that's a good point.

There are versions where Cinderella isn't as gruesome. Charles Perrault, another very famous fairy tale author, had his own version of Cinderella where her step-sisters are fully intact by the end of the story. So it's quite obvious Disney was more attached to this version since it was much more decent.

Just like Cinderella, Greek Mythology has hundreds of different versions about just a single myth. You have Hesiod, Homer, Apollodorus, Ovid and those are just the writers from thousands of years ago. Nowadays, we have thousands of modern adaptations, translations, and rewrites of Greek myth to comb through.

There's just so much to choose from! And that's not even considering how interchangeable Greek myth is with its Roman counterpart.

What that means is you're never going to be able to get everyone to agree on one myth. Sure we can agree on certain details, but just like Ancient Greece, every city state had it's own version of a myth.

Herakles or Hercules was no exception.

Yet it's like I alluded to as well. There are some certain details that remain consistent from myth to myth.

Now let's look at a story that doesn't have a lot of versions to pull from, and just like Disney Hercules, it was heavily toned down: The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

This Disney film is arguable the most sanitized of the animated adaptations. A personal favorite of mine that far outranks Hercules in every way, but it was a huge hurdle to adapt.

From Esmeralda's attempted SA and death, racism, Quasi being bound and abused in jail, Phoebus' less than honorable pursuit of Esmeralda, Frollo's creepy obsession and his horrific control over Quasimodo, the religious themes and motifs, it's crazy how Disney was able to adapt it at all.

While it is pulling from Victor Hugo's original novel, there were a dozen films made before it that also tried to adapt this famous tale. The 1939 version of this film starring Maureen O'Hara is one of the greatest films ever made. For it's time, it made an incredible movie that sanitized many of the darker aspects in a way that cemented this classic tale into a more modern audience.

So is it any surprise that a lot was dialed down in Disney's version so children could also understand the message Victor Hugo was trying to tell? That the deformity Quasimodo was born with unfortunately led him to have a very harsh life- not because his disability affected his quality of life, but because of how society viewed/treated him. Their own perception led him to be isolated, ostracized, abused, and pitied. Likewise with beauty and race in Esmeralda's case.

They are different sides to the same coin.

I have a lot to talk about with Quasimodo. The next disney movie I will begin analyzing will be Hunchback, so prepare yourselves as I wrap up on Hercules.

But I digress.

Because Disney films are catered towards children, is it any wonder Hercules got the same treatment?

Part II: Greek Myths for Dummies

Greek Mythology is not an easy thing to adapt for a single film. Disney films, especially animated ones, are gonna get you at most a 90 minute timeslot and that's already a lot to ask for a highly-trained team of animators, musicians, writers, actors, artists, etc.

There are a lot of bases to cover.

Especially since this may very well be a kid's first introduction into Greek mythology. So we have a lot to answer

Like...

Why is Zeus king of the gods? Why does he have so many kids? How does the afterlife work? Why do I have to pay a man to get into hell? Are winged horses normal here? Why are the Titans bad? What goddess is that with the funny flower headband? Why won't they name all the background gods- are they important in the world? Is being compared to Aphrodite a good thing? Why doesn't Zeus realize his brother is trying to kill him? Why can't I have hubris as a treat?

All good questions, dear reader. And with a limited timeslot, there's not a lot they can talk about, so animators are throwing as much visual exposition as possible.

But who is this glittering assemblage?

That's why to understand what's going on you have to have prior knowledge to get what's going on in the background.

Like Lord of the Rings. Big world, lots of story to tell. The Silmarillion will help, but that's already a lot for a first time fan.

And since Hercules is written with kids in mind, it has to be rewritten some. So the established canon is kind of being thrown out the window, rearranged, and patched up like an old man who threw off an emperor's groove.

But Gerald Scarfe and a team of Disney animators managed to combine the former's caricature design style to the Disney standard to create Disney Hercules' unique style.

These gods aren't given the background character design treatment you'll find in other Disney movies, they are very stylized and exaggerated to visually convey their personality, their role in this universe, and if they're good or bad.

And the nice thing is, Greek mythology has an extensive list of symbols associated with each god that allowed Disney's own technicolor pantheon to reflect the very same icons.

Look at Athena above. There's her war helm, her breastplate, a cute little owl. She screams war goddess, but look how gentle she is with the bird. Her glass of nectar is a prop to show off her generosity, her self-restraint, and her desire to keep the peace.

But on the flip side, Ares is in the same get-up as her, war helm, breastplate, but his sword is drawn and his stance is one of action. We can see both these war gods are similar, but their temperaments and approach to war (same as their personalities) are so drastically different, and their color scheme helps so much as well.

It's incredible how much detail was poured into this and while I can go on gushing about the designs, we must push on.

Say what you want about how accurate the greek mythos is shown downgrades the overall movie, but the background story is lining up with a lot of the context we would lose were this in any other medium. The gods, how they look, their personalities- it's there.

It's accurate.

Sure the same cannot be said about the gods and mortals who have a role in the overall story they made, but that's the last issue this post will hopefully tackle.

Part III: A Hero's Journey

While Disney had already dipped their toes into Greek mythology with the likes of Fantasia and Goddess of Spring, Hercules was the first try to make it more than just a short.

So the myth they chose to adapt had to be iconic. They couldn't do it about the gods- that's just too much drama. They needed a hero, someone who struggled and fought and had a support group comprising of supernatural beings. And who is the most famous hero of Greek Myth?

Herakles.

There's just a few slight issues with that, heh...

Herakles is a really rough story.

To summarize, Zeus magics up a disguise to look like the mortal Amphitryon to woo the guy's wife, Alcmene. She gets preggers, Hera finds out and naturally goes ballistic. So Zeus pulls a fast one on his wife to save his kid, and thus Hera nurses baby Herk giving him god-like strength. A few assassination attempts later, Herakles grows up, marries, and has kids. Despite this, Hera isn't done, but she doesn't target the H man anymore, oh no, she sends him into a fit of madness whereby he decimates his entire family. Once it passes he works for a king, like his distant cousin, and he does 12 increasingly intense labors as a sort of penance and at the end of it, he's promised immortality or an indefinite Hera leaves him alone pass. Wonder Boy finishes that, but then he gets infected with centaur blood after taking on his dad's worst personality trait (adultery), he dies via his own funeral pyre, but at the last second his dad saves him and he becomes a god.

And Disney is gonna try adapting that???

That's about a dozen labors in itself, so how are they gonna do it?

To summarize here are the elements Herakles has going on that can be adapted to your standard Disney film:

Protagonist: Hercules (b/c the Roman version is much more popular)

Damsel in Distress: Megara or Deianeira (most notable love interests in myth)

Side-kicks: Iolaus (Hmm those undertones, huh)

Antagonist: Hera

Flaw: wrath / impetuous/ salacious

Unique ability / quirk: super strength

We have a pretty solid line-up for a story here. But at the time in the 90's, there is already another adaptation of Hercules going on strong: Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

This show first came out in the mid-90's and ended a couple years after Disney's Hercules dropped.

So how are they going to make it distinct from that?

It's really easy actually.

Super easy.

Disney's Hercules got a lot of inspiration from Superman (Christopher Reeves version).

Hercules is literally an innocent farm boy (mild-mannered Clark Kent), Meg is your hotshot spitfire Lois Lane, and Hades is your bald megalomaniac investing millions of dollars trying to axe one guy - Lex Luthor.

And let's be honest, the myth of Herakles reads like a modern superhero. He has super strength, he fights monsters, there's a damsel in distress every now and then- he fits the bill!

At this point in time, Disney didn't have a superhero and since that started to be a bigger appeal as the 90's marched on (*laughs in Marvel*)

It was a smart choice to bridge this tale to the modern time.

So for that reason, if they were going to make Hercules a super hero-esque character. He needed a villain and Hera wasn't going to cut it.

Part IV: A Hera-Shaped Hole

Hera was absolutely vicious in myth. This lady orchestrated the entire demise of Herk's family, his sanity, and his freedom. She wanted him to suffer just so Zeus could see how betrayed she felt every time he had a dalliance with a mortal.

Zeus never learned, but Hera's tactics did. And it was by her hand that sent Hercules into servitude under his cousin, the king. A title Herakles should've had had Hera not intervened.

And while wicked step-mothers are abundant in Disney's canon, it wasn't going to work because she's Zeus' wife. Yes, Hera received repercussions for starting a coup against her husband once in myth, but it was a brief punishment. Most of the time this couple can't stand each other, but they are what's keeping the pantheon together. And Hestia's cooking.

But here's the thing, Hera may be a bad person in this myth and others involving sons of Zeus, but she's a good person in other myths. Even at the beginning of this one, Hera found an abandoned baby and nursed him because he was all alone and crying out of hunger. She has her virtue, she's a good queen.

Yet with her iconography of peacocks, marriage, family, cows, and queen of the heavens and gods, she gives off very ethereal imagery.

This was the lady sending monsters and horrors of Typhon and Echidna's brood- that's her?

It can be done, I'm sure someone will do it better than Blood of Zeus, but it's much harder to adapt, especially with Treasure Planet on the duo of director's mind.

Just see Lindsey Ellis' Disney Hercules video, you'll understand.

But y'know that thing with the monsters.... Kinda cool. Monsters coming in from the pits of hell- pretty rad i guess. Well who else could throw a litany of monsters at our little hero?

Oh.

Yeah, okay, fine.

Hades, you're hired.

Yeah, the direction of this movie absolutely did a backflip the second the writers wanted Hades as their villain.

However, based on concept art, this was something they wanted from the very start and I'm sure we can all see the appeal.

I mean as soon as this movie came out so many other greek myth adaptations jumped to make Hades a bad guy, and like kudos to y'all, but this really is the easiest god you can paint as a villain. Home boy literally is dark and dank and emo as can be. Congrats we found another goblin sewer man to dress up as the mustache twirling evil-doer!

Like... This writes itself.

And pitting a god of the dead vs a mortal who's striving for immortality? It's poetry. It's an on the nose symbolism. I can't make it any clearer.

There's even an excerpt in Revelations that Disney references:

"Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire." 20:14 (NIV)

Hades is written as a Devil character. He's a deal maker, soul stealer. There's so much you can do with a Mephistopheles archetype. It's always a show stopper, I mean Ursula did it with extra steps.

Hera is a goddess of the heavens. Hercules is fighting the heavens to get into Heaven(TM). That's all kinds of complicated to simplify in a kid's film.

We want a villain to be scary, to be mean, and unjustified in their cruelty.

Hera wasn't going to work since Herakles' mother (though unwillingly) is the other woman. It would paint Zeus as another morally bad person. Why on earth would Herc look up to that guy? In fact, why would he want to join a band of morally corrupt people?

So let's make a new villain.

We can have the hero endure a different kind of pain.

The damsel's story doesn't have to end tragically because of a betrayal.

Make the story relevant and simple.

What archetypes can we match up to make this ancient myth fit into the modern day?

Make it clean, and make it understandable for kids. Throw in as many myths as possible so kids can see how big this world is.

The mythology is wrong, sure, but we'll spark that interest. We can make mythology fun. It'll make kids curious to learn more about them.

It certainly worked for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Part V: Conclusion

This movie is an absolute blast. I think many fans can agree and though the story does have its issues (See Conflicts series), it did it's job. With such a fun and memorable cast, lovingly animated characters, and mind-melting musical numbers, it stands uniquely among the other adaptations of Greek Mythology and perhaps it's why there was a bit of a resurgence in it's popularity as time marched on.

Herakles is a tale of struggle, sacrifice, and courage. One man battled and fought to achieve the divine, but at the end of his life, he did what few other mortals were ever able to do.

And Disney's Hercules took that character and developed him in such a loving way. To see his struggle both internal and external, it's a beautiful circle when he accepts his mortality and gives up his greatest dream for love. He didn't belong anywhere, caught between heaven and earth. Yet somehow he found it with someone who had been through hell and was hungry for heaven.

And just remember.

Not every work of fiction has to adhere to these magical bylaws that dictate how your Greek Myth AU must follow. However, I would like to softly counter-point my own point and say if you are going to make interpretations of greek mythology, be they musicals, video games, fanfics, or modern retellings, one must include the soul of the character they are based on. Hadestown, Hades(the game), Percy Jackson (most of the time), and the God of War franchise being prime examples.

Disney's Hercules took these characters and made them more exaggerated and updated to fit modern archetypes that are prominent in a Western Christian based-society. To me, I still see the soul of what these characters represent, even if some things were heavily condensed or rewritten.

Stories evolve. As is the nature of living things.

Till next time, Dear Readers.

[th3j0v3n]

INTRODUCTION SEQUENCE. START.

“Greetings! Perhaps we’ve met before, but you might not know me.

You’ve seen me around, right? Like in Ghost World!

Y’know, the unrepeatable 50+ pet storage npc?

No? Then I’ll reintroduce myself!”

Legend:

🛠️- Most preferred

☀️- Sure!

Names:

🛠️ - (Ghost Hunter) Joven, Helios, Icarus, playeR

☀️ - Maelstrom, Sting Energy (YES THE DRINK.)

Information:

“I’m the Devs’ personal guardian! There actually was another one, don’t know what happened to him though!

Though… People do say that he’s my brother. I can’t remember him at all though, nor his name for that matter.

But anyway! I do realize not everyone here is a Ghost Hunter like our Hero, so I’ll talk about the game!

Just a quick rundown, I come from the game Ghost Simulator on Roblox. Not to be confused with the other game of the same name.

Ghost Simulator is a carefree game where you hunt ghosts and all your generic simulator stuff!

But enough about that, I should talk about myself! I am a cyborg! I can’t blink, nor cry, which is a shame honestly. Only to pure humans! Like you! Unless I’m seeing wrong?

Actually.. I think I’ve been rambling too long. Or have I not been talking enough? Sorry! Still getting used to this new set up for npcs!

Until the next post I make! Joven of DJ out!”

Extras:

“Well, that’s not exactly all. I might’ve stole some guy’s body so I’m able to do this. Still! My digital form still exists! This is the stuff from the guy’s body. Sorry again, Hero!”

- @sunwaltzincminor “The hero’s loving partner! Reminds me of my own relationship with Mind. Wonder if these two are connected.. Would that basically mean I’m dating his counterpart? Wait. Am I the hero’s counterpart?!”

- @electricalcheese “Ugh, the hero’s good friend.. I don’t like that guy. He’s weird. He literally threatened to pour steaming hot water on me!? HOW am I supposed to like him!? I hope he gets infected with some sort of disease.. this stupid ######..”

- @90-kit “Another one of the hero’s friends! Geez he doesn’t have a lot. Don’t have much to say on him. My paper just says ‘NULL’ which is basically nothing. Whatever it is, the hero seriously needs to make more friends. Being heroic and all and still only having like three friends? Do better.”

“And also! Tags! I might forget to use them at times. Whoops.”

#theguardian’swords - Joven asks answered

#hero’sentrance - playeR answers asks

#JovenDJposts - Joven posting whatever he wants

#playeR..whatever - playeR posts

[notquitejiraiya]

9 Years

Well, here we are again. Back to spew some nonsense you could’ve done without about fic writing and otherwise. As a small introduction to myself, if you miraculously come across this before anything else I’ve done online: hiya, I’m Becks. When I was fifteen years old I decided that I was going to create a Naruto specific blog to post fanfiction on and 9 years later, I’m still here.

This is only my third reflection of those 9 years, the first and second of which you can find linked respectively, but it’s the 24th of September, and so here I am, ready to continue a tradition set by the wonderful @unioncolours of documenting her years in fandom. Sink your teeth in below the cut off if you so wish. If not, have a wonderful day ♥️

Before I talk about myself, a little thank you to her, to Bex. Two days ago, she posted what I consider to be her most powerful reflection yet, and I command the lot of you to read it, feel it, and walk away demanding you treat yourself and others kindly for this year and all those to come. Her heartfeltness and honesty is something all of us should learn from, and it is an honour to share my forename, space, fandom, world with her. Thank you, Bex, for all you do, here and away.

Now, the first thing I must address about this Rebecca here is “job no1”, as I called it in last year’s recap. “Job no1” was to become more concise.

It is safe to say that I did not get hired for “job no1.” Not yet, anyway. Perhaps on the future. Maybe. We’re still in the interview stages, and you know how many rounds these things take.

To set the tone of this past year, I will admit that it is the 24th of September, not just when I post this reflection, but as I write it. As mentioned, I have only written two recaps of this sort in my fandom career, both of which were written ahead of time and posted on the day with little stress. This one is being bashed out when the sun is already setting, and time is running out.

Time is something that has fascinated me for years; it’s something I’ve written scientifically on, written fiction about in short spells, and something I’ve come to respect a bit more over the last year, too. It’s something I’ve especially enjoyed playing with and writing about in the one fic that I’ve published/added to this year. In Grandmaster, one of my favourite passages from the fic and one of the bits I’m most proud of involves time. But I won’t dwell on that. Grandmaster — or GM, as I affectionately call it — will get its moment later on. For now, let us focus still on time.

I’ve had a strange amount of it this past year. I wouldn’t say I’ve had too much, nor particularly little, on average, but I certainly feel as though I have. Even if not, it’s slipped away from me, and this year that feels rather damning. You see, as you might know, I live in Finland at the moment. I say ‘at the moment’ because this time next year, when I’m writing my next recap, that will no longer be true. I already no longer live 40 minutes from the front door of my best friend — moving in the summer upped it to almost an hour — and by next year I won’t be able to jump up, hop on a train and see her when the mood (and life) suits. Many rather saddening things have hammered home time to me since last September, but even considering that one thought makes time seem rather fleeting. I need to treasure it until the summer, and so forgive me if my time at my laptop is a little less than it once was.

More relevant to you reading this, perhaps, is the amount of this year that I have been able to spend writing. Without examining the statistics, I feel like I’ve barely written this year. I know that that is ultimately not true; I have made good progress with GM, and have written snippets of works to come. But I still feel as though I haven’t had the time in year 9 that I would’ve liked, and even less than the small amount I dared to expect.

In the time I did spend writing, though, I largely spent it on GM, so it only feels right that I dedicate a sizable portion of this recap to that fic.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that GM has consumed me. I view the world through a different lens having conceptualised, written, and frankly breathed the world in that story. I see situations in the real-life chess, and I imagine where that might happen in the GM-timeline, were it there. I see the people I envision when the scene play out like theatre performances in my head, and I think about GM, even when it’s totally irrelevant. Even just a face. I hear songs, and I think about GM. I watch movies, and I think about GM. I sit on the bus or god forbid the train, it rains or it shines, and I think about GM.

I have never, in my life, felt a story in my bones like this. When it ends, which this year it certainly must, I will cry. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t cry because it’s over — I will cry because I will remember all the countless hours that have gone into not just writing but thinking about this fic. It is a part of my daily life and has been for such a long time now. I don’t go an hour, let alone a day, without thinking about it. It has been in progress for over 2 years — during every every wrapup I have written, it has been in progress — and 2 nights ago, I finally posted a chapter, the heart of which I first sent to my friends almost as long ago.

I won’t spoil the contents, as I’m sure many of you may not have read it, but I’ll admit now that I cried as I went to sleep after posting it. It took me three months to be happy with that chapter. Three months. That long to accept a chapter that I knew I had the core, important part of set and the was happy with since almost two years ago. It felt and still feels ridiculous to me. Even three days ago I felt like, surely, I had forgotten how to write. Or maybe I just had never known how to write in the first place. I had lost my touch, at the very least, the very spark that made anyone read more than the first paragraph. How in the world could it be that I manage to write these core lines two years ago, when GMverse was Strangers and only Strangers, yet having honed the voice of this story for so long, I now couldn’t write a single good word?

I felt like such a failure. I felt like there was no way I was ever going to finish it, and if I did, I was sure I wouldn’t be happy with it. But I told myself that I was going to post the fic on Majsasaurus day and so I said, “Fuck it,” to my assignments and I finished it.

I was late hour, but I almost did it. When I read it back before posting, I cursed myself for all the clunky sentences and obnoxious descriptions — which may not even exist, I don’t know — but I still pressed post at the end, and I immediately felt proud of it.

It’s incredible when you realise you can do that. I think perhaps it’s a skill that doesn’t make sense to people when they first start writing. Not giving a fuck, that is. I know I was guilty of it for a very long time, but there’s no point in being a perfectionist, especially if you’re trying to write about realistic people. Real people are so far from perfect that you’re fucking kidding yourself if you waste your time on such things. Year 9 has been a lot about that: settling. Settling for grades in uni I once would’ve beaten myself up over. Settling for a sentence that I know could be worded better, in theory, but I’m not yet the writer who can word it that way. I’ll meet her one day, maybe. But before I get to, I have to mould her. I won’t do that without writing more and more.

In any case, in the words of Shikamaru in my own fic: “They’re just words. They don’t mean anything unless you let them.”

In line with that thought, I want to thank you all for your theories and thoughts and engagement with GM. The fact so many of you have managed to find some meaning or emotion in it that matters to you specifically, even if that differs between people, amazes me daily. It makes me emotional and humbles me and all manner of things I could write an entire reflection on.

It is on that note that, I would like to extend a particuar mention to @twnj who has brought to life so many scenes in GM with her beautiful artwork as well as created so many fun headcanons for outside of it. I am so lucky to have met and to know you, and it is a pleasure being rambly with you, my dear.

I also would like to shout out @backgroundcharacterno5 for creating one of most incredible things I have ever seen by way of this comic. You brought that scene to life more beautifully than I ever could’ve imagined even in my own head, and I cannot thank you enough for thinking of GM at all. Thank you.

And finally, the book club. Learning of your existence blew my fucking mind, and it continues to. I refer to you this way because I do not know exactly how many of you there are, but I bloody love you all, even those of you I have never spoken to. The comments I received from you and from every reader, even if I am shit at replying to them, move me and inspire me endlessly. Your analysis and theories and reactionary comments thrill me and make my heart sing. So thank you. So much.

With GM this past year, I feel I have reached a point as a writer that I never expected to, and am endlessly proud of. I never expected people to be so engaged with something I wrote — I thought I was a one- or maybe two-trick pony with song inspired banter-filled one shots and depressing britishisms. But this year showed me that that isn’t true. Do I have the widest range? No, and I’ve made peace with that. But does that devalue what I make? No. I love it. I have fun making it. And as an incredible, frankly unexpected cherry on top, so do some of you. So thank you for that. You’ve ticked so many of my author bucket list dreams in a single year.

As I have certainly mentioned in past ‘blog’-type posts, there are elements of GM which are personal to me, but in the coming year, I will introduce to you what I consider my most personal fic yet. While I may lend things I have overheard or observed, I rarely let myself into my own work too heavily. I value the power of looking over a shoulder, and do try my best to do that. But I rarely force my shoes on a character.

Piano Man (affectionately referred to by myself and those closest as GMJ) will not be like that either. Not on purpose. It will not be a 1-to-1 retelling of my life, the opinions and feelings and experiences within it will by no means be my own, but it will be an expression of things I love and know more directly than before.

GMJ will be set some 20+ years after Strangers, so I am still not escaping this universe I’ve built for myself (not that I want to escape it). It will follow one of my most beloved characters in Shikadai, and how he meets someone he really ought to have known his whole life, but by chance, has not: Inojin.

Any writing I have done that is not GM this year has been ShikaJIn. I know that many of you who follow me, do so for ShikaTema. I wonder if there are even so many of you now that joined for GM that ‘CHESS’ and ‘Cloud Nine’ are now irrelvant in my list of past fics. But regardless of what you’re here for, and whether you ship them now or not, I hope that you’ll stick around for GMJ. It is not a ship fic anymore than GM is, and I like to think that perhaps you trust me by now to tell you a story you might enjoy.

Besides GMJ I have dabbled in a couple of other potential AUs, the most promising of which is a wartime au, which came about after my dear friend Bex suggested that @clumsydragon28 and I read a book she was reading: In Memoriam. IM was one of the most fun reading experiences I have ever had, and I cannot reccomend reading with your friends enough. The joy is something I can’t quantify, and I will treasure that experience forever.

I myself have read more books this year than I have in years. I haven’t read so many fics, which saddens me, but I am so pleased that there is space in my life for fiction and stories again besides thsoe in my own head.

One of the books of this year will no doubt come when I return home to England for Christmas, because last year, darling Barb sent me (and Bex) a goodie box from across the Atlantic. In it, she placed the US edition of my favourite book: The Beach. It will get loved and cherished this year with its first physical read. I promise.

There are so many other things that I could say here, but ultimately, I don’t know that I have the time. All I can say is that I am so grateful for the people of this fandom space, old friends and new, and even those that have not shown me kindness this past year — you have hardened me to realise I am worth more than I thought.

The next recap I write will mark a decade of notquitejiraiya. That, in itself, seems absurd. But I am certain that I go into it lucky, and grateful, and really really fucking inspired.

Thank you, all, for another notquitejiraiya year. May the next be sweet and full of more frequent updates than the last! ♥️

(PS - I’ll try to be more consice next year, but I’m not making any promises)

[golden-explosions-main]

"Howdy, you already know who I am, so let's stop wasting time and get going," 🌻🎸🌟

(About/Rules below👇)

About: Welcome to Flowey's ask blog! It's a funny thing though, he usually has Frisk (his best friend) by his side when he answers questions, perhaps he feels more comfortable with them by his side? Or perhaps he just needs help with dealing with some the crazier stuff that happens time to time.

They live on the surface together, and both Asgore and Toriel are still divorced but both have shared custody, the teens switch houses every month or so.

Flowey used to go to public school alongside Frisk, but that only lasted nearly three years until a 'bully revenge incident' at 12 years old that got him permanently expelled, ever since then, his mother has been home-schooling him.

At 14 years old, after a very late visit to Alphy's office, he found out that he somehow got his soul back, however it's tinier than it used to be and malformed and lopsided, it also causes him a great deal of physical pain when he experiences strong emotions, he rarely complains though, at least not on the blog.

Proof of said soul. 👇🏻

At 15, he received what they ended up calling a potbot! (created by Alphys) It's a flower pot, but it gives him height, moves around, and has hands! It's not as great as a real body, but it's almost as great. Annnd...not long after that, he lost it in a river and nearly drowned, BUT, after a few months, Alphys gifted him a better one, and it's the one he still uses now. The potbot! (I'm really proud of this thing) 👇🏻

At 16, an Anon temporarily gave Chara their body back and it was revealed that not only has Chara been following their brother for years, but they were also the one responsible for returning his soul to him. They've been keeping in contact as best as they could ever since then.

Also at 16, Flowey and Frisk met a haunted creature who they call ??? or the Doctor (created by Complex) an Amalgamate from another timeline. The Doctor is a powerful mad scientist, who had long ago done something unspeakable which resulted in them being an Amalgamation (there have been several big hints as to who they may be), they have been keeping in contact with both of Flowey and Frisk ever since their introduction, donating their burned black book to Frisk, watching the two teen's lives from afar, the Doctor also seems to have VERY big plans for Suzy (from Undertale and not quite Deltarune(?)

Due to his anxiety, depression, self-hatred and trauma from his childhood and from being a literal soulless murderer, Flowey struggles to make plans for his future, but the love from the people in his life and his hobbies keep him afloat day by day.

Fun fact: Flowey has a surprisingly good relationship with his parents and even more so with his father.

Fun fact 2: He considers Frisk, Chara, Papyrus, and Monster Kid his best friends, with Frisk being his Number One Best Friend Who Is Alive. And being Chara is his Number One Best Friend Who Is Undead.

Most important fact: They live the Sunshine Route timeline or the Sunshine Route AU, it was born from my fanfic series, Growing Pains, which is where the Frisk, Flowey, and River Person blogs are very loosely based on.

---

Rules:

🌻Aside from the occasional swearing and harsh language, I consider this blog to be...fairly SFW, and I'd very much prefer to keep it that way, I'll let you know if I don't like something.

🌻Flowey is very protective of his timeline, he considers himself lucky, so if it or his loved ones are threatened in anyway, he will make threats and be very mean, his bark can be just as bad as his bite, so be careful if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

🌻I usually prefer to keep things simple for my sanity; and prefer to have the role plays be one on one, so unless you have a very good idea or want to do something helpful, please don't ask to join.

🌻PLEASE DO NOT reply by reblogging, I often go back into my blog's archives to look for past posts, and responding by reblogging makes navigating things difficult and it can also clog other people's dashes.

🌻I also prefer to keep things light and funny, something to cheer myself and others up, but I'll allow depressing and dark things to happen if it's well written.

That's it, have a good one!

[inkblackorchid]

I watched this duel again yesterday and I honestly wish I had any sort of fresh take or unusual perspective on it, but I think the truth is that I just don't. This duel is three things for me:

Proof of concept for a very intriguing larger narrative (whose execution sadly doesn't land all the way for me)

The introduction of a character who has several interesting key aspects to them (and who could have, perhaps, been handled a bit better)

Emblematic of all the issues I have with the WRGP arc's writing.

As I said, I don't think I have any truly revolutionary things to say about this duel, but I feel like getting my thoughts out, so expect a fairly non-structured, stream-of-consciousness post below. There are multiple things here that bother me and I finally want to dissect them. Feel free to follow along if you also like examining stuff like this in more detail than it perhaps needs to be examined in. And I really mean examine them in unnecessary detail. Be warned, this post could count as a dissertation in terms of length. But I'm passionate and like analysing things, so no attempt to control its length was made.

So, I won't mince words here. The Team New World duel is absolutely where several major aspects of the time-travel-Iliaster plot completely fall apart for me. I want to make it clear that this isn't the fault of Aporia's character writing or what this duel is building up to, though. Nor do I think that the concept of a secret shadow organisation using time travel to influence world events is too out there. Lbr, this is yugioh. The time-travelling-cyborg-shadow-organisation is absolutely not the culprit of why I think some things don't work here. (And by here I mean specifically the WRGP arc.) Moreover, I'll be the first to admit that the finale this duel builds up to, with everything from the Ark Cradle beginning its descent to Yusei's final duel with Z-ONE, is stellar. So there are several things that do work here—but I think that may be exactly the reason why the other things piss me off all the more.

So what are the "other things", then?

Well, simply put, a lot of this arc's supposed setup and worldbuilding falls apart as soon as you start asking a few simple questions, first and foremost "why". And again, I will likely not be treading new ground here, but this just irks me to no end. However, so this post doesn't devolve entirely into unproductive whining about a part of the show I wish had been better than it was, I'll be doing another thing here: Trying to provide solutions for the things that irk me as I go along. As a kind of thought exercise, and because it's not hate motivating me here, merely extreme frustration about an arc that feels like it was fumbled like a hot potato. So, let's start digging through this mess.

The elephant in the room.

This whole arc (and in fact even the pre-WRGP arc before it) hinges on the concept of antagonists using monsters that can absorb synchro monsters, which is treated as such a monumental problem that we see Yusei, our protagonist, in downright anguish about it not one, but several times. Like, this eats at him.

(Pictured: A troubled boy brooding about his synchro summoning issues.)

And look, I know everyone and their mother has brought this up at this point, but this is already the first bit that falls apart under the weight of the question "why". Why is Yusei so hung up on the fact that duelling against Meklords means using synchro monsters becomes pretty risky? Why is this enough of a problem to supposedly drive the plot for a not insignificant stretch of episodes? Now, I know Yusei uses mainly synchro monsters as his heavy hitters, and I have seen someone bring up the fact before that even irl, completely altering the strategy of your entire deck is a pain in the ass, to say the least. And I do want to admit that this is a valid argument. If Yusei genuinely had to change his whole deck to accommodate the new circumstances, that would be a Herculean task, to say the least. However. While I can see the merit of that argument, I have to raise two counterpoints: One—who said he had to permanently change the entire structure of his deck? The show never gives us reason to believe that anyone other than the cyborgs will suddenly jump out of the woodwork and also use an anti-synchro strategy, and it doesn't show us anyone else who uses a strategy like that, either. And two—note the framing of this issue. The show never suggests that Yusei needs a new deck, or that all his old tricks are completely invalid now. It harps on and on about how he needs a new strategy, yes. But is that the same thing? In my opinion, nothing really demands that Yusei needs to restructure his deck completely. If anything, he only needs to keep in mind that this is now a possibility when duelling people, and thus start keeping a backup plan. And unfortunately, he kind of does, which is where I need to address the Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste-shaped elephant in the room, because it sadly undermines that sensible argument something fierce.

(Yeah, remember this thing? Because I do and sometimes wish I didn't just so I wouldn't have to get frustrated about it all over again.)

Listen. We're all not stupid. Even before the Team Unicorn match, the vast majority of people watching 5Ds would have been aware that tribute summoning, ritual summoning, and fusion summoning are very much methods to get around the dreaded synchro-killers that already exist in the card game and don't require any supernatural shenanigans to be acquired. But speaking only for myself for a moment, I was still at least a little bit willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that not being able to synchro summon would be a categorical impossibility for our beloved motorcycle family before this scene. Except, then Draco-Equiste comes out. And naturally, you're left to wonder "ah, so this is the solution to the synchro problem, then"? But no. No, it very much isn't. Because unfortunately, this is the one and only time Draco-Equiste even shows up. Immediately before and after this duel, this card is treated as though it never existed. Even though this thing could have posed a serious threat to the Meklords, what with being able to absorb the effect of a dragon synchro monster in the graveyard and being able to bounce back effect damage. (Can you imagine how differently the Team New World duel might have proceeded if Yusei had summoned this again?)

So, of course, we're left with the question: Why the fuck was this even here? And on the surface, the answer is super simple: To sell copies of Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste, naturally. But narratively? Narratively, this card's appearance is a disaster. It's a miscalculation of such insane proportions I can hardly find the words for it. Because it proves the assumption many viewers, especially TCG players, would have had from the start: Fusion, ritual, and tribute summoning are still a thing and would definitely work against Meklords. To say this takes the wind out of the sails of the central problem of "oh no, what are we going to do without synchro summoning" would be an understatement. And that's without addressing the fact that the actual "solution" the show provides against the Meklords, as cool as Shooting Star Dragon and Red Nova Dragon are, is, on paper, ludicrous: In a bind because your synchro monster gets absorbed? Just synchro summon harder! And I just. Please. We can agree that this is silly, right? Even if they're very cool dragons and I definitely appreciate them, this is almost looney tunes logic.

Swinging around to a more productive discussion, could they have done their "uh oh, synchro summoning is now impossible"-bit in a better, more coherent and less silly way? Probably, but depending on how they might have handled it, they would have probably needed to sacrifice some other things. The issue here is the thematic element. Synchro summoning is hated, and thus punished, by the emperors of Iliaster because to them, it's a symbol of humanity's greed and subsequent destruction. And originally, the show ends up vindicating its use despite their warnings about the destroyed future in a sort of awkward "with great power comes great responsibility"-way. As in, synchro summoning still has the potential to ruin humanity by the end of the show, but Yusei and the others "earn" their right to use it anyway because they and humanity as a whole learn the lesson not to overdo it. Supposedly. The metaphor is, frankly, a bit wonky, which might be another problem in and of itself. But what's relevant here is that any attempt to fix this conundrum would thus have to keep the thematic element intact. To do that, our protagonists would therefore have to rely on synchro summoning at the start of the arc, as they did before, and would also have to rely on it by the end of the arc (again). The in between is, I think, where more interesting things could have been done with the concept, though—moreover, it's where I think the plothole of "hey why doesn't anyone tribute/fusion/ritual summon" could have been addressed. Say the gang learns that synchro summoning might now get dangerous and actually tries to shift gears. Say they do try out fusion, ritual, and tribute monsters to account for that—only to run into an in-universe meta wall and realise that sure, these monsters might not get absorbed by Meklords, but their effects and strength can't keep up with the synchros their opponents use, or that they're flat out too cumbersome to summon! It could have been as simple as showing scenes where trying to get tribute fodder onto the field or play a fusion or ritual spell card would have been too slow, too inefficient in a duel. They could have also gone an even simpler route and flat out made it so that Meklords could have absorbed any extra deck monster. Would this have made them stupidly overpowered? Sure. But wasn't that kind of the point, anyway? The Meklords were supposed to be a nigh insurmountable obstacle that ultimately required discovering not one, but two new, unique ways to synchro summon—and even then, the solutions still weren't perfect because Shooting Star and Red Nova can still get absorbed under especially tricky circumstances. So I doubt making them that much more powerful would have mattered. (And they had to be heavily adjusted for the irl TCG as is, so there's not really a need to factor in that concern, either.) Finally, and I admit this pains me a little to say, I think that any version of the synchro dilemma that wanted to make sense should have flat out removed Draco-Equiste. The card does nothing except open plotholes, and especially if we want to keep the themes intact without opening the can of worms that is alternative forms of summoning possibly being a better solution than Accel Synchro or Burning Soul, its presence just becomes a hindrance. Sorry, Dragon Knight Draco-Equiste.

So much for the synchro dilemma, then. But unfortunately, this is not the last aspect of the worldbuilding surrounding the three emperors of Iliaster and especially their Meklords that's built on a shaky foundation, to say the least. Onto the next one.

2. The Meklord genocide and the many questions it asks (and never answers).

I'm gonna roll several points into one here because they're all related to the Meklord genocide—that being the supposedly unavoidable catastrophe in the future where Aporia received all his trauma from. And I want to preface this with two statements, one good and one bad. Firstly, Aporia and the way his backstory gets exposed, quickly getting us intimately acquainted with the utter devastation of the Meklord genocide, is extremely compelling. You really get a sense of the terror at play and it gives him a perfect, understandable motivation for wanting to avert that future at all costs, even if human lives have to be sacrificed along the way.

(Ahhh, the lovely smell of childhood trauma in the making.)

Secondly... The Meklord genocide makes zero sense, and it has everything to do with the fact that once again, several major aspects of it buckle under the weight of a few simple questions. But let me roll that back first and examine what those major aspects, which the Team New World duel introduces us to, are.

Number one: I went back and checked, and this is the first time in the series that we are introduced to the concept of synchro summoning resonating with Moment reactors. Previously, the reactor itself, through the concept of planetary particles, and, by extension, the Moment energy itself was only implied to be something like a perpetuum mobile, infinitely producing its own energy.

Number two: Now, we have heard of Moment rotating backwards and exploding in the show before. But there are two new things here, one being that the Iliaster trio explains that in this instance, it caused a chain reaction, and that, for some reason, all the Moment reactors began exploding one after the other. The other, more crucial part being that they claim the Moment reactors responded to people's hearts. This ties in with another small thing introduced much earlier, where Bruno/Antinomy explains that Clear Mind, Yusei's accel synchro technique, is a way of "controlling Moment". Both link the reactor and its energy, which are pillars of 5Ds' worldbuilding, to human emotions. And I already need to say this here: This doesn't make lick of sense. But more on that later.

Number three: We don't get an outright explanation for this in this duel, as in, it's not stated verbally, but right after Moment supposedly "responds to people's hearts", the Meklords show up, heavily implying that the reactor, for some reason, summoned a robot army to destroy humanity.

Now, I'm going to give you the quick-fire round of questions these three concepts immediately sparked in my mind when I saw these scenes, because I think that will illustrate just fine why I have such a problem with all this: Since when is synchro summoning linked to Moment and how? If humanity already knew through the Zero Reverse incident, which is the foundation for 5Ds' canon, that Moment reactors could spin too fast, gain a negative rotation, and subsequently explode, why on earth did nobody think to install safeguards against that? Why are the Moment reactor and its energy linked to people's hearts now? How does that even work? And how is a human supposed to "control" a sodding energy reactor that was implied to stay in perpetual motion through a set of gears, which famously know how to read hearts, through achieving a clear mind? And why, oh why did the reactor—independently of its human creators, apparently—have a killer robot army at its disposal to let loose on humanity when it grew sick of their shit?

This plot has so many holes, it may as well be a net instead. And you know what the worst part is? The show answers none of the questions above. Moreover, the implications behind the concepts introduced for the sake of setting up the Meklord genocide are buckwild, to say the least. Let me run with this real quick to highlight the absurdity here.

Taking the idea that an energy reactor can respond to people's hearts and summon an on-demand murder robot army of apocalyptic proportions when humans around it grow too evil at face value honestly makes me wonder how the Moment reactor in NDC hasn't exploded five times over since its creation. You mean to tell me that between Goodwin's Iliaster goons, the Arcadia Movement, the corrupt security forces, and all the duel gangs in Satellite, there weren't enough evil people there to make the reactor go crazy? Plus, all of these people were already synchro summoning as if their life depended on it! Synchro summoning is basically ubiquitous from the moment the show starts, to the point where it's more unusual to see a duellist who doesn't synchro summon than one who does. But somehow, that wasn't enough to affect the reactor yet? Or is the implication here supposed to be that the part where the man-made machine meant to produce limitless energy can suddenly see into people's hearts was added later into the reactor's development? That humans for some reason decided, "yeah, that's what our new energy source needs! A way to shame and punish us with violence on an unimaginable scale for our transgressions!" And that's without addressing the robot army. Who built these things? And who decided it was a good idea to put them at the disposal of the very reactor itself? Do you mean to tell me some team of utterly cracked up scientists decided that the best entity to put in charge of the robot army that was constructed for some reason was the reactor system supplying the world with energy, "computers can't be blinded by human error and would thus never deploy this army for selfish reasons"-style? (Honestly, I almost wish that had been the idea here, but I'm absolutely certain it wasn't.)

I can already hear two major criticisms to the above, purposefuly hyperbolic extrapolation in the back of my head here. Allow me to talk about them for a moment.

One—"Okay, so the WRGP arc has plotholes. Didn't the dark signers arc have those too, though? It's not like they explained everything about all that stuff."

You're right! It did! As much as I love the dark signers arc, it hardly has the most tightly-written worldbuilding of all time, either. There are lots of things, some small (why was Rudger/Roman somehow a signer and a dark signer at the same time), some not so small (why on earth did Rex' plan to summon the king of the underworld and remake the world seemingly hinge on one of the signers failing to seal their tower, which he could have never guaranteed in a million years) that the DS arc never properly takes the time to explain. But even so, the dark signers arc doesn't fall apart under questions such as "why" and "how" nearly as easily as the WRGP arc for a reason that is as simple as it is stupid: The DS arc has a much less ambitious premise, and though its antagonists are cool, they don't actually pose a greater, moral dilemma. Think about it. The premise of the DS arc is a run-of-the-mill prophecy thing. You've got your chosen heroes, your destined enemies, and a battle for the world using supernatural shenanigans. And a lot of questions of "why" or "how" are relatively quick to be brushed aside with "magic" (or rather, Crimson Dragon/Earthbound Immortal shenanigans). Moreover, the dark signers themselves, while having interesting stories relating to the heroes on a personal level, are still, fundamentally, pure evil. They're not fighting to prevent a devastating, apocalyptic future, they just deadass want to get revenge and destroy the world. And all the more complicated, major themes the arc has (class discrimination, police brutality, how societal alienation can lead teenagers to join cults, poverty, etc.) are actually not really tied in with the Earthbound Immortals, instead happening on the sidelines or only being tangentially related to the dark signers (such as when Kiryu becomes a dark signer through the abuse suffered in prison). The only major theme that ties in with the dark signers is destiny VS. freedom of choice, which also gets resolved in the battle with Rex Goodwin. (Interestingly enough, all the more complicated themes on the side were also dropped after this arc, but that's a rant for another time...) Perhaps the arc still has some inconsistencies here and there, but largely, it stays fully coherent. Thus, the DS arc makes it way easier to suspend one's disbelief, making the unexplained parts seem much less egregious.

Two—"Calm down, this show was made for twelve year-old Japanese boys. They don't need to explain any of this."

If you honestly think children don't deserve well-made entertainment whose concepts and worldbuilding can hold up to scrutiny, I have nothing to discuss with you. Sure, children will swallow some concepts much easier and will suspend their disbelief much longer and more artfully than any adult on average, but that doesn't mean "kids are dumb anyway so why bother putting as much effort into worldbuilding for their shows as for adult shows" is the hot take you think it is. I am fully congnisant of the target audience for this show—that doesn't make me any less convinced that said target audience deserved a show where things made sense while they were watching it and where things could still make sense if they decided to rewatch it years later. Because, you know, that's what I think a good show should be able to do.

And with that, I can come back to the WRGP arc and an issue that ties in with both things I just addressed: The WRGP arc's actual story premise, buried beneath the well-known, equally beloved and beloathed tournament arc format, is a lot more ambitious than the DS arc and has several, fairly heavy, core themes that it sets up and tries to resolve by the end, among them: learning how to cooperate as a team (during the WRGP) and learning how to be independent (by the end of the show), destiny VS. forging your own path (round two), and, most importantly, taking responsibility and fighting for one's future. That last one especially is not only a good topic to address in a show specifically made for 5Ds' target audience, it is also represented by both Team 5Ds and Team New World in-story. Spicier yet, both teams are actually fighting for the same thing. Team New World, having seen the supposedly unavoidable, tragic future and thus decided to take action against it, is fighting for a future that doesn't have to be marred by such tragedy, by whatever means necessary. And Team 5Ds, young, hopeful, and trusting in their connection to one another and humanity as a whole, is fighting for a better future because they believe that tragedy can be avoided. The future these two teams want is almost the same—the only, crucial difference is that Team New World has embraced the use of drastic measures to bring that future about, while Team 5Ds hasn't. To Team New World, the future presents something like a trolley problem, if you will: They think doing nothing will lead to that inevitable tragedy and erase humanity, whereas sacrificing New Domino City in the present will still kill people, but preserve humanity in the long run. And they have firmly decided pull the lever and set the course so the trolley runs over just one person instead of many. Team 5Ds, meanwhile, isn't even thinking about the lever, instead insisting there has to be another way, and that even thinking about getting anyone killed for this is stupid. The whole conflict is, on paper, wonderfully compelling, because you can see where both sides are coming from. Sure, Team New World's members still act like absolute dickheads in true yugioh-tournament-opponent fashion, but ultimately, their goals make sense. Viewers can put themselves in their shoes and perhaps think that, faced with a horrible dilemma like theirs, they would make the same, awful choice to set the course and cause suffering now to avoid greater suffering later. For the greater good.

Unfortunately, the questions I listed above undermine all this somewhat, because as good as these antagonists are on a character level, it's incredibly easy to poke holes into their backstory and especially the circumstances surrounding the horrible, distant future they want to avoid so desperately—which, in turn, undermines that terrible future somewhat, because this is a narrative that demands weight (in my opinion). But if the supposed threat at the end, the terrible thing even our protagonists briefly aren't sure they'll be able to avoid, begins falling apart at the seams in terms of logic when you think about it for more than two minutes, where is that weight supposed to come from? There is also another question to be answered here that I need to discuss so I can touch on a central aspect that hampers the plot in this arc somewhat later:

Why are they so convinced that horrible, destroyed future is utterly unavoidable?

I want you to really think about this question, with me. Canon... never really gives us any direct proof that they're justified in being this certain. However, that doesn't mean we don't get an answer, per se, though the answer is a bit vague.

The implications here are... something, to say the least. First, as our basis, we have to assume that every "correction" Iliaster has made has been to avoid humanity's destruction in the future. Because frankly, that's all we get as far as Jose, Placido, and Luciano's definition of the "correct path" goes. Then there's the second bit. Apparently, they've been merrily "repairing" history for a good while already, yet, for some reason, they always get the same outcome: The Meklord genocide. This, in turn, has led them to take more and more drsatic measures to try and avoid it. And I want to point out the very obvious, mind-boggling implication that comes with this: Apparently, after every "correction" they made, these three have either let history run its course to see where it ends up this time, or have quickly zipped over to their own time to check whether things were still shit. Meaning Iliaster's whole deal of fixing history to make sure the Meklord genocide never occurs has been a very, very long run of trial and error. (I want you to think of all the possible "fixes" this could have included for a moment. We know from BBT that killing Pegasus was one of the ideas they had, for example. Did they also try to kill the presumed Industrial Illusions employee who came up with synchro monsters? Did they try to kill Yusei's dad so Moment would never be invented? Could they not have tried to simply inhibit the creation of the robot army, then? Or made sure someone installed some bloody safeguards on the reactors, as Yusei later does in-canon, which somehow works when he does it? The list goes on.) Now, we know that in canon, their newest idea is that the future can be fixed if they just destroy New Domino City altogether.

Here, the questions begin again (you may sense a running theme): If Moment is already invented and internationally known, why would destroying its place of invention do anything? If synchro summons are already a thing, doesn't that mean destroying NDC would only slow the catastrophe down, at best? And most importantly: Why are these guys so utterly convinced that this "repair", of all the ones they've already done, will save their future? How can they know that this particular plan will work when they've supposedly already tried everything?

(There is, of course, the tragic possibility to consider that perhaps, they know that there's no guarantee this will work. They've tried everything, after all. So maybe they know this won't fix things, either. But we know that Aporia, like Paradox, like Antinomy, and like Z-ONE is, somewhere at the bottom of his despairing heart, still desperate for a shimmer of hope. And maybe, just maybe, he has reached such a point of desperation that he'll watch an entire city getting destroyed if it has even the faintest chance of succeeding. But unfortunately, this is purely speculative—the show never states this, and so, I can only leave it in the realm of fan interpretation.)

The show never answers this question, either, instead relying on the audience to suspend their disbelief some more and assume that Iliaster has put in the work and is 100% certain that the future can and will absolutely end in disaster unless they destroy NDC now. It almost acts like they have some sort of supernatural foresight; they know things nobody else in the show's world does, and due to this (and their non-human status) they label themselves as superior to the "foolish humans", who, without their guiding hands, will only bring about the apocalypse. But their superiority and the internal consistency of their actions is already wobbling under the weight of all the half-assed worldbuilding I mentioned above, which is an extra big problem due to another, major difference between the WRGP and the DS arc: While the DS arc stylised itself as a sort of funky genre mix between cyberpunk dystopia and urban fantasy (in a very broad sense, given that ancient Inca gods are very much real and their prophecies come to fruition in the modern day, yet we are not presented with any sort of magic outside of the conflict with the dark signers), the WRGP arc, aside from its tournament format, stylises itself much more as science fiction. The antagonists are no longer ancient, evil shadow gods, they're cyborgs from a destroyed future. Their motivation isn't as simple as wanting to destroy the world, either! In fact, they want to save the future! And they don't pose a threat to our antagonists through shadow duels in rings of fire and giant, magical monsters that sacrifice human souls to be summoned. No, they have advanced technology like high-tech robots that cut our protagonists off from one of their go-to tactical options, and they send out duel robot armies, and they travel through time by means of sophisticated wormhole-technology.

...But do they?

Now, I said I don't just want to complain here, I also want to provide solutions—and I intend to stick to that. But first, because these two things are so intrinsically tied together, let me address the final aspect that puts Team New World as antagonists and the WRGP arc on such shaky ground from a writing perspective.

3. Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, magic-science cyborg nonsense.

So, I've talked about the strongly differing methods the Iliaster trio uses in comparison to the dark signers. Sci-fi is the name of the game now, so we've got robots, cyborgs, advanced tech and... time travel. But amidst all this, you may have noticed something. Even though our plot is supposedly decided by futuristic tech now, the magical/occult element that was there in the first half of the show doesn't actually get dropped. Why? Because it can't be. Because the signers, our protagonists, are defined by their status as a group of magical chosen ones, hand-picked by an ancient Incan deity. Regardless of what the writers of the show wanted here (and my personal guess, based on hearsay and what I've read on forums, is that they wanted to hardcore-pivot to sci-fi because they hoped it would engage audiences more), this was an element they couldn't erase. (Or, well, technically, they could. The signers do lose their marks at the end of the show, after all. But perhaps they thought doing that earlier was too risky.) So genre-wise, we've got a bit of a situation here. From the pre-WRGP arc on, 5Ds is more of a sci-fi show, yet, we've still got all this occult stuff wandering around that can't be cut out of the narrative and still influences it because it's too intrinsically tied to our main actors not to. And you might have noticed that this actually doesn't just extend to the signers. As in, they're not the only ones where sci-fi and magic elements mix. This happens for the Iliaster trio, too. Placido gets a sword that can randomly cut a hole in space-time (and it's never explained how). The Meklords can cause real damage in duels even though they're supposedly not supernatural. Moment reactors can suddenly read people's hearts. Not one, but multiple cyborgs get a magical girl transformation where they change clothes and runners, or even combine from three people into one. And for some reason, the Crimson Dragon, even though its "own", central enemies, the dark signers, are already defeated, doesn't take its marks away from our heroes until after the cyborgs are taken care of, suggesting that the ancient, magical entity recognises the robots from the future as a supernatural threat of some sort. None of this is presented with any sort of attempt to get it to make sense, yet, we're supposed to believe it isn't magic, because we're all about robots and time travel now.

(Insert the magical girl transformation song of your choice.)

And I want to make one thing clear: I'm not saying this weird genre-mix couldn't have worked. In fact, I think it's hilarious and low-key brilliant even in the wonky state we got. Sure, let's make the antagonists robots from the future while keeping our protagonists the agents of an ancient Incan god on the mortal plane! If nothing else, you absolutely can't argue the idea wasn't original.

However, even with all the love I have for the show, I can't help but feel like there's an issue here, and the only way I could put it into words would be genre dissonance. We are supposedly in a sci-fi show now, yet the central antagonists, who are also the fundamental reason for this genre shift, seemingly can't decide whether they're actually using technology or magic for their schemes. And this becomes a problem insofar as that seemingly no effort to meaningfully fuse the fantastical elements with the pseudo-scientific ones is made, yet at the same time, they aren't properly separated, either. Specifically the latter might be harming the show even more than the former. Let me explain what I mean.

I'm no stranger to the fact that sci-fi sometimes likes to use technology that's supposed to be so advanced that to an outsider, it begins looking indistinguishable from magic. And in all fairness, that is probably what the 5Ds writers were gunning for. What hampers this a little, though, is that we're just coming from an arc that had actual magic in it, which leads to the allegedly scientific elements sending some mixed messages. Especially because they're never explained. And I'm not saying we needed super hardcore, internally fully consistent sci-fi worldbuilding here. Frankly, with all the weird nonsense 5Ds has already mostly handwaved by the start of the pre-WRGP arc, that would have been absurd. But I think a few explanations here and there, hell, even just the occasional off-handed remark, could have done a world of good for this arc, and especially for the Meklord dilemma and the setup of the ruined future. I don't need a whole breakdown on how exactly a reactor knows about the greed in people's hearts, but a remark somewhere on the side about how, for example, the particles that are the central player in that reactor also happen to be copious within the human heart (which would be impossible to prove, but ignore that) would have been nice. And I don't need a full breakdown of how the robot army was built; a throwaway remark that humanity created it as weapons in their supposedly endless, petty wars could have been cool, though.

My point is, fundamentally, that unlike the occult nonsense, which can skirt by on prophecies and simple, black-and-white, good VS evil stuff, the sci-fi elements feel like they demand a surface-level justification for their existence, at least. A surface-level justification they didn't get. And this is without addressing the much, much bigger problem that may actually be the root cause of most, if not all the things I've listed above so far: The time travel.

I don't think it's any sort of new, groundbreaking opinion to say that time travel is a notoriously finicky worldbuilding element that many writers, regardless of medium and/or skill, have already massively shot themselves in the foot with. And unfortunately, I feel like this has happened in 5Ds, too. Specifically because the time travel has seemingly absolutely no limits. The Iliaster trio (and even Paradox) can seemingly be everywhere they want, in any time period, and do whatever they want/deem necessary. Worse yet, the time travel is actively shown to have massive consequences more than once. And I think it's under the weight of this massive, utterly uncontrollable element that the plot really begins to collapse. Because frankly, with the implications we're given, things just really don't look good in a universe where limitless time travel can be used! Let me circle back to two questions from above to really emphasise this: Why are these guys so utterly convinced that this "repair", of all the ones they've already done, will save their future? How can they know that this particular plan will work when they've supposedly already tried everything? In a universe with limitless time travel, these questions become an absolute mess to deal with. And the real problem is that canon never even entertains the idea of answering them. Sure, you can begin to fill in the gaps for yourself if you feel like it. Maybe it's not that all the previous "repairs" Iliaster did truly didn't work, maybe they brought about even worse futures and that was the reason why they were discarded. Or maybe there's a hidden in-universe rule that people from the future who go back to the past actually don't have the power to change anything, as in, no matter what they change, it will never affect their present, because their actions will always loop back around to causing the same things they already know. But there. Precisely there is the problem. I'm not getting this from canon, I'm making it up from scratch. And sure, all stories have gaps—that's where a lot of fanfiction lives, after all. But when you reach the point where you have so many gaps that the audience can no longer suspend its disbelief over these gaps, that's when there's a problem. And the WRGP arc, for all that its antagonists are extremely compelling, pose genuine, moral dilemmas, and for all that it resolves in one of the best arcs of 5Ds, has precisely this problem for me. The worldbuilding is stretched too thin, and my suspension of disbelief breaks and leaves me wondering why so many good themes have to be buried in an arc that is this frustrating to watch sometimes.

*deep breath*

Okay. So now I've aired all my grievances and laid out all the problems that make me shake my fists in frustration at this arc, at the Meklords, and at the Team New World duel. What about the productive part, then, you might ask. I did say I wanted to provide solutions, as far as I can, anyway. How would I try to solve this mess?

Well, honestly, I think the solution here, at least to me, would be fairly basic: More consistency. Make it make sense. The genre mashup can stay exactly the way it is, but maybe tone down the magic on the cyborgs a bit. Make them actual cyborgs. Even if their tech is justified through bullshit, at least justify it. Why does Placido have a reality-splitting sword? Oh, it's actually the Moment Express wormhole technology in miniature. Why can Moment reactors see into people's hearts? Well, duh, they contain the same, special particles as human hearts. Why is there an army of robots in the future to begin with? Humans built it. For war. Like they did so much else. And why did the reactor use it against them? Because it was just responding to their own negativity. Their own, constant desire for strife and petty conflicts amongst one another made them actually turn the weapons against themselves (or rather, against the people they personally didn't like, which ends up being everyone when everyone has a grudge against someone) through the reactor. (The show almost does this one, but not quite.) How do the three emperors of Iliaster know destroying NDC, specifically, will fix the future? They don't! They're doing this on trial and error, and more importantly—and I think this would work best if it was introduced purposefully late—they can't actually save the future by changing the past, because they're not from the past. They just don't actually know that this is a rule of time travel.

None of these fixes would have to be big, episode-spanning things. Off-handed remarks would have been enough. But I think just that could have saved many points from becoming the plotholes they did.

And with that, I think I'll finally leave you be, I've rambled quite enough. To anyone who has made it all the way to the end, I can only give a sincere, heartfelt thank you. I realise this is a LOT of words. Moreover, I'd like to leave you with one more statement: Though I can absolutely understand if this post comes off as me getting on a soapbox and cupping my hands around my mouth before yelling, it's not meant to be. I absolutely invite discussion about the the handling of, the themes behind, and all the arguments I gave regarding the Meklord worldbuilding and the Team New World duel. So, feel every bit as free as I did to yell about this. This post encourages yelling.

[ebitenpura]

Hey! I saw a post where you said Eight and Koth dated. *shocked* So I was wondering if you could do a post on Eight's love life 👀

Looks like everyone's got similar questions on their minds. XD @magicallulu7 Koth's relationship will be in the middle if you want to skip to it, but I've decided to summarize a few more to answer the full question (excluding the more questionable villains with which he's had dalliances with this time since I feel they've gotten enough spotlight). Without further ado....

Eight's (Not-So) Complicated Love Life:

Shara Jenn/Watcher 2

Shara, Shara, Shara. What agent doesn't share some sort of relationship with her, working or otherwise? For Eight, she might've been his first bout of feelings--feelings that he never acted on or acknowledged deeply enough, but ones that did make both of them realize that he admired her. She would've called it a compromise of a good agent. He would've pretended not to hear her. The thrilling part was that he was never ashamed or unabashed about his affection, and would never forget to show it to her either, whether in the workplace or somewhere more intimate. One could call him attached, but she knew better. Someone like Eight could never hold such a weakness, or so she falsely assumed. Perhaps the truth of it was too bitter a pill to swallow.

Time and time again, he's come at her request or her aid without really examining why; all he knows is that she's someone he always wants to look out for, the same way he does the Minister. Her and Keeper were Intelligence to him, and Intelligence was his family. He sold his soul to Jadus to keep her safe, even when she saw it as a betrayal of what she'd fought for, and that was the turning point in their relationship. Though Eight's care for her is unconditional and deeply loyal, the things they've left unsaid between each other--and themselves-- have slowly fractured the relationship they once had.

2. Koth Vortena

Excitement and a whirlwind romance sum up these two. Freshly out of carbonite and curious about Zakuulan culture, Koth was a whole new world to Eight, and the gentle, roguish touch that he'd seemed to been sorely lacking his whole life. The Alliance brought them closer together on more than one occasion, but it was the introduction of Koth being....Koth, a new element in a sea of familiar faces, that pulled Eight into his arms. It was sweet, young, fresh, and wide open. Things that being an agent just didn't ever bring to the table. People like Koth weren't a dime a dozen, and even rarer did they ever cross Eight's path. One could call him a bit shallow for gaining interest purely out of the need to gather intel on Zakuul from their resident Zakuulan, but it was done with genuine, honest intent from Eight. The smooching and cute pet names were....an unintended consequence of that.

In some ways, they were both innocent and a bit naive in certain ways to one another. Eight with his eccentric and antisocial habits, and Koth with his lack of exposure to others from other worlds. The other was a big adventure to them, and it showed, with the two often sneaking out to eat Zakuulan night market foods without notifying Alliance personnel. Though an unlikely pair at first glance, Eight's quiet nature contrasted strongly with Koth's vibrancy, and it was as they say: opposites attract. Koth loved him for his strength and bravery among other "adorable" traits that Eight denied existed, and Eight adored Koth's warmth and adventurous, open nature that seemed like everything he wasn't.

Alas, the latter sentiment spelled misfortune for the lovers, as Eight's hands grew bloodier from the war with Zakuul and their relationship began to feel the strain of it. Eight's thoughts that Koth came from another world entirely--a normal life with light and love and honesty--began to weigh him down heavily the more the fighting progressed, as he'd done nothing but kill his people and escalate the violence in service of the Alliance. Eight would never deny that he was a weapon made to kill, and that the world he hailed from was one that Koth and their relationship could not survive. He feared that Koth would see his true colors as unbending, bloodied steel made to cut down enemies and allies alike, and that Koth would reject him in disgust, as the Alliance had begun to. Day by day, their relationship descended into cold silence, as Eight slowly shut him out.

Koth tried to understand, pleaded for him to stay, that they could work it out together if he only let him help him--but Eight was not ready, and his heart trembled at the thought of such vulnerability. They left with incensed words and half-assed goodbyes that only left Koth with confused thoughts and dark emotions.

That's not to say their breakup ended their friendship entirely. Koth, to this day, retains his affections for Eight and calls him those silly petnames, if just to see the smile on his face again. Not being together hardly stops them from sharing the same close touch they had when they were and the occasional lingering glances, but hey, Koth is confident he doesn't need to be kissing Eight to show how much he cares. Just the way the world works, as he might say.

3. Rass Ordo

The newest in the line of Eight's love interests is the stunning Mandalorian, Rass. In some ways, he reminds Eight of Koth--playful and witty, with the addition of being a strong warrior, something an Echani such as he is privy to. Strength of character and heart are big factors when it comes to Eight's attraction, and it's just a bonus that he's quite nice on the eyes as well. Their relationship is still in the early budding stages, but they've shared more than a few moments in the heat of battle--or as they call it, the Echani and Mando love language.

Rass is attentive and sweet. Eight doesn't feel as if he has to hide anything from him, and their similar cultures makes him feel at home when he's by his side. Strangely enough, he feels compelled to fire back when the other flirts, like they're in one big battle dance with one another. Only time will tell where it takes them, and whether they're more than bursts of adrenaline in each other's veins.

[usergreenpixel]

JACOBIN FICTION CONVENTION MEETING 36: THE GAME OF HOPE (2018)

1. The Introduction

Well, hello there, Citizens and Neighbors! I’m alive and back with a review, as promised. (Very happy about it too because I missed you!)

Now, to cut to the chase, @josefavomjaaga was the first person who told me about the novel’s existence, which had me a bit intrigued already due to my constant search for new media to consume and review.

However, my dear friend @tairin helped seal the deal and officially put this particular piece onto my review bucket list, as a physical copy of the book (in Russian) was her present for my birthday last year. I read the book back then but, due to all the other reviews and personal life stuff, kept putting away this particular review.

Fortunately, I finally found free time to catch up on the piece and post it, so here we go.

Before we proceed, here’s a link for anyone who wants to download the book in English. As mentioned, it’s available in Russian too, but Russian-speaking members of my audience will need to purchase the epub or a physical copy to be able to read it. I’m not sure if it’s available in any other languages.

Also, this review is dedicated to @josefavomjaaga , @tairin and @frevandrest ! Okay, let’s. Fucking. Begin.

2. The Summary

“The Game of Hope” tells the story of Hortense de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepdaughter, and her coming of age journey, including crushes, rivalries, and her life at Madame Campan’s boarding school for girls.

Although I loathe Hortense with a passion, review material is review material and I was still intrigued by the premise, so let’s see how this premise plays out in the book!

3. The Story

Generally, I enjoy coming of age stories and YA novels and, luckily, this one is no exception. It is melodramatic, but it’s justified because Hortense is a teenager and a dramatic person, so her POV having melodrama is expected.

It’s a slice of life kind of story and most political events happen in the background but still realistically affect the characters, which is realistic and very neat!

Also, this is by far the only book where anti-Frev sentiments don’t give me an urge to flip the fuck out, since Hortense lost her father and almost lost her mother during Frev and is far too naive and young to understand politics! Of course she will think Frev is evil and of course she will believe that being noble would be enough to have her executed!

The pacing is great too. There are some time skips but the author clearly knew when to do them and when to slow down. Now complaints here.

If you are craving a story with typical teenage melodrama involving historical figures, then I guess it’s a book for you.

4. The Characters

I don’t like Hortense as a person here, but as a character she’s realistic and nuanced. She has the selfish and bratty nature that would stick way into adulthood, but she genuinely loves Eugene and her friends at the boarding school. Also her resentment towards her stepfather and the Bonaparte siblings is quite realistic, as from her point of view they’re just asses towards her mother for no reason.

Caroline Bonaparte starts off as a rude bitch (also thanks to Hortense incorporating her own bias), but luckily she becomes more and more nuanced along the way and becomes sort of a frenemy to Hortense. Caroline clearly doesn’t enjoy studying under Madame Campan and wants out of there. Perhaps due to my bias, or because we don’t see her POV, Caroline grew on me more than Hortense.

Eugene (I HAVE to mention him) appears later on in the story and, as expected, is an absolute cinnamon roll.

Josephine is idealized in the story by Hortense, but she isn’t flawless and keeps trying to find Hortense a husband in the beginning. However, she also helps Caroline and Joachim marry, which makes their treatment of her later on a fucking dick move.

Émilie, Hortense’s cousin and close friend, is slightly older and already married (not that unheard of back then), but is still a teenager going through the typical motions common for that age. She is more mature than Hortense and feels trapped in a loveless marriage with Captain Lavalette (no idea who that is).

Campan is very strict but genuinely cares about her students. I liked the part where she has The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen attached to the back of a portrait of Marie-Antoinette and flips the portrait when inspection arrives. Simple, but quite clever!

5. The Setting

No complaints here! Gorgeous descriptions that are very much historically accurate, and Hortense’s POV is conveyed masterfully, which aids the story greatly.

6. The Writing

Simple yet beautiful, without diving too much into purple prose territory and doesn’t shy away from mentioning or implying normal things like periods or sex. I can sense some pearl clutching might happen, but personally I think these topics should be normalized so I don’t complain. Also, my copy graciously included translations of Italian phrases, which is doubly awesome!

7. The Conclusion

Overall, an excellent, overall accurate and believable story! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about Hortense or just looking for a Frev/Napoleonic coming of age story without too much action.

Alright, on this note, I’m concluding today’s meeting of Jacobin Fiction Convention. Stay tuned for updates, guys!

Love,

Citizen Green Pixel

[theoutcastrogue]

Favorite movie from 01?

[Give me a year and I'll give you my favourite films / recommendations]

Perhaps "favourite" isn't the best word, perhaps the best word is "biggest obsession", but I have to go with Mulholland Drive. David Lynch is a very special case, you're either into him or you ain't, and arguments either way are of little use. I just want to note 2 things, about Lynch in general and Mulholland in particular:

Contrary to all appearances, it actually makes sense. It may be a weird sense, a dream sense (literally a dream, for like half of this movie), but it's not random.

It doesn't need to make sense to you to be enjoyable. It's perfectly cool to treat it like a trip, and just get lost in the highway sauce. You can revisit it later, and think about it and look up what others have made of it, but it's optional.

Now, these 4 are my favourite 2001 films:

Spirited Away needs no introduction, it's widely thought as the best Ghibli film, and I love it to bits.

I'm a complete sucker for Moulin Rouge! and for truth! beauty! freedom! love!, and will accept no criticism at this time.

El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) is early Guillermo del Toro, and a sort of prelude to Pan's Labyrinth: it's horror, it's set during the Spanish Civil War, and it takes a stance, along with its own supernatural elements.

And I simply adore Hedwig and the Angry Inch (second musical lol). Does that need an introduction, on 2024 tumblr?

Also of interest:

Monster's Ball is the best from the rest, an incredible drama with Halle Berry's best performance. Very disturbing from start to finish. "Billy Bob Thornton plays a prison guard who begins a relationship with a woman (Halle Berry), unaware that she is the widow of a man (Sean Combs) he assisted in executing."

Ocean's Eleven is the fully on-brand film, it pretty much defined what modern American heist films should be like. No small feat!

Das Experiment: so the Stanford experiment inspired some notoriously bad takes, not least by Zimbardo himself. It also inspired this amazing film. Please don't bother with the pointless American remake. (I owe tumblr a serious post about the Stanford experiment btw, but this is not the place.)

The Brotherhood of the Wolf is surely the wackiest AND darkest action / horror / period / swashbukcling / wuxia / monster film out there. We're in 18th century France, there's the legendary beast of Gévaudan, and cults, and spies, and all of the above.

Il mestiere delle armi (The Profession of Arms) is a shoutout to @wearemercs, it's a realistic war film with landsknechts and condottieri in 16th century Italy, we don't see that every day.

@feyariel I remember that Metropolis was wonderful and I loved it, but not much else about it. Sorry, it's been a while and I have shit for memory!

Monsters, Inc.: not best Pixar, but good Pixar

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: can't leave this one out!

The Man Who Wasn't There: excellent neo-noir by the Cohens

Gosford Park: a whodunit set at an English country house, and the polar opposite of Downton Abbey (which goes at great lengths to convince us that masters deserve their servants' loyalty), ironically written by the same person

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie): here begin the films that were adored back then, especially by the artsy/festival crowd, but I haven't seen them since and I've no idea how they've aged

Ghost World: based on the comic book by Daniel Clowes

Waking Life: Linklater, philosophy, rotoscope, Ethan Hawke's there, oh my!

Y tu mamá también: Alfonso Cuarón, road trips, sex, young Diego Luna, young Gael García Bernal, oh my!

Ichi the Killer: by Takashi Miike, based on Hideo Yamamoto's manga. do not watch this if you're not completely sure you wanna watch this lol

[dxseol]

hello everyone and a very happy opening to district x!! ( *´ ˘ `*)

i'm excited to write with everyone and their lovely muses i've been seeing on dash! i'm luyi (they/them), here with my unfortunately red flag of a guy that i present to you: "kim seol", a 23 year old "humble" tier d enhanced agent with "parents" that manages a "sushi restaurant" (lol).

here is his general profile, under the cut will be a short introduction to get to know seol alongside some plot ideas to kickstart some action! do like this post and i’ll get to your dms eventually, or discord upon request! ✶⋆.˚

Ⅰ. 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 ↯

born ahn eunbyul who was raised by parents who viewed him as their most successful mutagen experiment rather than their youngest son. the illegal project was destroyed by a villain group who sought out powerful abilities, taking him in as one of them to make use of his eyes of death perception.

changed identities multiple times in his life while going undercover as a spy or performing assassinations. in this ‘life’, his identity is kim seol, a lazy carefree guy who for some reason, isn’t fired from his job. he’s always drinking or partying and does just enough to not get fired — which would infuriate people.

seol is a fun guy to be around with if you aren’t his coworker. he’s good at talking and knows how to lead conversations, there’s some sort of charisma that draws people in. he wouldn’t say no to a fervent night together too. you just have to deal with his strange attachment to his potted plant that he planted a gps on.

he’s like the snow that falls from the sky, mystifying you with its fragile icy beauty, then melting away when it feels the warmth as if it never existed; that’s who ahn eunbyul is. they always say, winter is the season where life dies.

Ⅱ. 𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬 ↯

coworkers – it’s either your muse wants to help him out out of the goodness in their heart, seeing how pathetic he is or noticing the potential that he does not want to utilise. or not. your muse gets annoyed by him and wants him fired. but hey, at least he lightens up the mood (even if the situation doesn’t needs it!).

a drink or two – they met at bars, parties, whatever social event it can be! seol can be pretty popular at such places. though, his reputation can be either good or bad. consider it a gacha to find out which one your muse will get! he would approach your muse and they could hit it off. he can be flirty and shower them with sweet nothings, take their hand to enjoy an even longer night together. seol dumps them the next day.

to fill the void – they used each other. in what way? let’s find out!

rivals/enemies – maybe your muse is suspicious of his background, and they want to find out what seol is hiding. or perhaps they noticed his ability seems to be more dangerous than he lets on. or maybe it’s just something petty, who knows?

friends? – detached from relationships he may be, he’ll still appreciate the time they spent together. he could always disappear and throw away his identity, your muse won’t remember him, but ahn eunbyul will always remember.

from the past – your muse had met seol in the past, but they aren’t sure if it was him or not. it’s strange, he’s so familiar yet your muse could never figure it out, and it goes on from there.

unbloomed love – a love that could have been possible, but the next day, he ceased to exist.

“family” – your muse knows who he is and they’re in the same line of work.

brainstorming time! we could figure out something fun, something crazy orrr if you already have a plot in mind. throw it at me and i’ll catch it, let’s plot! ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-

[letters-from-dekarios]

(tav post just in case: https://www.tumblr.com/tadpoles-r-us/744342741955297280/lynneira-sylverwind )

[the letter is written on either very old or very intentionally tea-stained paper. The words are written in a shaky hands, as though the author was struggling to hold her writing utensil. There are a few circular wrinkled spots on the page. Some sort of water stain? Enclosed with the letter is a map of Faerûn with a concerning amount of locations crossed out in red ink. Each x on the map appears to be more scratched in than the last, showing frustration. Along with the map is a small business card with a hand drawn graphic on some plants and potion bottles and the title “Elenor’s Eclectic Goods” printed in a swirly font, the address of the business is printed on the back]

Dear Gale,

I do hope this letter finds you well, as I would hate for such a first introduction to be on a bad day for you. My name is Lynneira Sylverwind. I am an Archfey warlock based just outside of Baldur’s Gate. I am currently making a living running my mother’s apothecary in the city. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? Elenor’s Eclectic Goods? I can’t count how many times I told her the name was silly and that she should change it, but she never listened to me.

But my mother’s poor choices in business names are unfortunately not the point of this letter, as much as I would like them to be, as my actual ask is far more… shall we say time consuming to deal with? You see, a friend of mine from the city went missing quite some time ago, and I am frankly at my wits end when it comes to finding him. I have searched all over Faerûn, as you will see in the map I’ve enclosed, but not a trace of him has come up.

From what I understand based on the source I was given (an underling of my patron informed me of your existence), I understand that you are human, so it seems a bit silly to mention my friend by name, given that we were both born long before your time, both being elves, but on the off chance you have at least heard of him, perhaps it will help. His name is Astarion Ancunin. He was employed as a Magistrate in Baldur’s Gate. He has been missing for 200 years exactly at my time of writing this.

I am writing you this letter in hopes that you’ll be able to help me find him. While my patron has eyes all over Faerûn, I have hit a point where I must begrudgingly acknowledge that I cannot find Astarion on my own. I dare not go too far into detail about it, but I can assure you I have exhausted all other avenues of search.

I will admit, I have no idea the differences between wizard magic and warlock magic, or if there even is one outside of the obvious inability for wizards to cast eldritch blast and other such warlock specific spells (though truthfully I don’t see what’s stopping anyone from learning? But that’s not the point. Moving on.) but I’m hoping that you’ll know of some sort of tracking spell that will aid me in my search, or that perhaps you could put me in contact with another wizard who does.

Along with the map, I have enclosed a business card with the apothecary’s address. All mail is to be sent there as I am in every day of the week nowadays and it’s just easier than having a home and work mailing address. I do sincerely apologize if this letter has come off as a bit rambly. I’m certain you can imagine the kind of stress I am under, although I tried my best not to get too far into it. No stranger needs my worried babbling, that’s for certain.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely,

Lynneira Sylverwind

P.S. On the off chance that you happen to be in contact with any clerics/paladins/otherwise worshippers of Lathander, please do NOT mention that you are in contact with me, for everyones safety and sanity.

Dearest Lynneira,

It is not every day that one receives a letter from a known oathbreaker asking for help. We’re frivolously warned of interacting with those who disregard their gods, but who am I to toss aside an ask for aid?

While I had never met her personally, your mother was known across Waterdeep. Anyone and everyone who needed healing from their (rather disastrous, I might add) wounds would tend to lean towards her shop over other apothecaries in the area. In this sense, I will offer you the knowledge I possess through Mystra herself in exchange for an insignificant price. I shall touch on that soon.

The magistrate you mention does not hold any significance in my mind, as far as my memory is concerned, but I can let you in on information I have heard. Through word of mouth, there has been an awful plague of young men and women disappearing in the streets of Baldur’s Gate. This phenomenon goes back some years, roughly around the time you seem to have lost your friend.

It is only through Mystra that I possess the spell you seek, that I can wield it as I do. I hope that this finds you before you have lost your hope. The spell itself is known as a ‘Discern Location’ spell. I have only used it once.

However, this spell is rather a feat for anyone. Even for myself, a wizard in the name of Mystra since I was a child, this spell is straining. It goes beyond the Weave, crossing through any spells or castings that might prevent you from seeking a person. No matter where the person lay, it can find them.

Given that you are a warlock, it is not likely you’d be able to perform this spell on your own intuition. I would like to offer my services in your time of need in this sense- I can never pass on the opportunity to practice a difficult spell. If you’d be so kind as to send an item that once belonged to Astarion or join me in my tower in Waterdeep, I should- and I say should loosely, as I said this is a rather difficult spell- be able to assist you. If not, perhaps my Goddess could lend her hand in your troubles.

We have all lost a dear friend in this world, Lynneira, believe me. It never gets easier the more that you lose, especially in this day and age. You’d think someone would have discovered a spell that would allow loved ones to live on together, but perhaps that would be a bit… strong, for the Gods’ liking.

In exchange for my help, I ask for yours as well. I have stumbled into a predicament of my own, that I will not get far into details about. If you possess any knowledge that could help one, say, perhaps remove a curse of higher, Godly sorts, I would much appreciate it.

I shan’t make this letter longer than it needs to. I wish you luck in trying to find your friend, and if you wish to take me up on my offer, please let me know. I am available any time.

Attached is a hand-copied page from a spellbook detailing the aforementioned spell in more depth. There are smaller notes marked in the margins highlighting certain points about difficulty and what is needed to use the spell.

Good luck.

From the desk of,

𝑮𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝑫𝒆𝒌𝒂𝒓𝒊𝒐𝒔

text reads: gale dekarios

P.S; I will do well to heed your warning. I’d much rather not get into too much trouble with those sorts of things.