#part of trying to capture the parallels is also trying to figure out how she is and how i can do justice to her character

[moe-broey]

@felikatze OH nothing LMFAOO (not that I know of anyway haven't caught up) I'm just rotating them both in my mind and desperately attempting to illustrate the parallels 😅😅

[crappy-writings]

WIP and Ideas List

Main Masterlist | My Fics | Recced Fics

So, I have a few ideas, but don't know which ones to focus on. Figured I'd put it up for a vote. I've always been bad at summaries, but below are the concepts, let me know which ones y'all would be more interested in :D

Most of them are Marvel because apparently my Marvel brainrot never left

Marvel

Little Bee | Hope Van DynexReader | Fluff Oneshot

Summary: Sparring with Hope was fun. Teasing her while doing it was even better.

Late Night Shots | Ronin!Clint BartonxBarton!Reader | Angst Oneshot

Summary: You mourn those who were lost to the Blip, including the ones who are still around. [Or Clint takes off shortly after the blip, leaving behind the only surviving Barton child, much to their anger and resentment.]

The Run and Go | Natasha RomanoffxReader | Oneshot or Series

Summary: You, an ex-Red Room graduate turned mercenary, take up an assignment to retrieve some sensitive information from the Triskelion. You run into Natasha as you escape, much to your anger. You can’t seem to escape her after this first encounter as different circumstances force you to work together.

First part is here!

Sick Fic | Natasha RomanoffxReader | Oneshot

Prompt: You're sick and don't want to tell Nat. She still finds out and takes care of you when you can't. It's kinda angsty, lowkey, but also really simple, and it's halfway written.

Pitfalls of Devotion | Natasha RomanoffxReader | Miniseries maybe?

Prompt: Follow-up to "Orpheus and Eurydice." It's not fully thought out, but its sort of supposed to be a parallel to the myth, going after her, maybe in the soul stone somehow and trying to get her back? Maybe, probably, end in angst?

Night's First Star | Wanda MaximoffxReader | Fluff Oneshot

Prompt: You were told that the first star in the night sky will grant you a wish but you have all you could ever wish for with her.

S.T.R.I.K.E. Out | Steve RogersxReader | Oneshot or Series

Prompt: A Captain America and the Winter soldier fic where the reader is a STRIKE agent that’s not in Hydra and is helping Cap out. The elevator scene is where the reader finds out everything is wrong and stays in the strike team to get more info. After the mall scene, the reader gets found out and is captured and lowkey tortured. Hydra send in the Winter soldier to get more info out of them but instead, he asks about Steve and why Steve knew him. The reader tells him about how they were best friends and stuff and bucky does the “he used to put newspapers in his shoes” but he’s horrified cuz he finds out his whole existence as a hydra “agent” is a lie. [Or basically a slow-burn reader insert of Captain America and the Winter Soldier]

Untitled | AvengersxReader | Oneshot/Mini series

Summary: You've gone rogue, having left the Compound in the middle of the night and no one knows where you've gone. You return a few days later and call for a meeting despite the heavy injuries you have.

Untitled | Kate BishopxReader | Angst Series

Summary/Prompt: After Eleanor Bishop's mysterious death, Clint and Kate begin to investigate, finding ties to the not-dead King Pin himself. [Or a spy-thriller type fic where everything will go absolutely wrong]

Untitled Meet-Cute Fic | Kate BishopxReader | Fluff Oneshot

Prompt: Lucky is unusually hyperactive, so Kate takes him for a walk. Doggy shenanigans ensue, leading Kate to meet a someone who may just steal her heart. [Or basically the intro to 101 Dalmatians]

Read this one here!

Untitled | Matt Murdockxfem!Reader | One-Shot

Prompt: Matt, for all his skillsets, doesn't realize his next-door neighbor is also a vigilante. [Basically had a stupid idea of the reader coming in at around the same time as Matt to their apartments and the reader smells of blood and they are denying it by blaming her period or something, idk]

Untitled | Daisy JohnsonxReader | Mini-Series

Summary Prompt: You, an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., have been on an undercover mission at a Hydra base, reporting on a secret project they have been working on. After one of your calls is intercepted and are made out, Daisy and the team work to get you back. [Basically the Whump troupe again, sorry, it's one of my favorite]

Prompt: Would love to write a spider-person!reader but have no idea what story I'd want to tell nor who to write it for.

Prompt: Would also love to do a choose-your own path type fic, but also have no idea what the story should be or who to write it for.

Star Wars

Prompt #1: Reader is a pilot squad leader. They lost their entire squad on their last mission and is, naturally, heartbroken. They have to write letters to their families and tell them that they’ll have no bodies to mourn. They’re taking it out on a space punching bag or somethin’ until they collapse and they scream. While trying to catch their breath, two hands reach from behind them, the hands feeling so familiar. The hands pull the reader back gently and the reader sinks into them and grip onto the person holding them. [Don't have an era nor a character in mind, tbh]

I'll take care of you. | ReyxReader | Oneshot

Summary: Rey gets hurt after a scavenging trip to one of the Star Destroyers deep in the Jakku desert. You promised to always take care of her.

Prompt #2: SW fic where reader was part of a shut down trial where they implemented chips similar to what happens to the clones in the prequels. Reader defected and joined the rebellion. The chip is somehow activated and reader starts attacking the rebels but is trying to fight the programming from within. [I was picturing either the originals or sequels era]

The Walking Dead

Prompt: Takes place during and/or after S3 ep7 and reader is working a lot harder cuz they feel guilty about what happened to Maggie? Idk, I started rewatching the show recently and was reminded of my huge crush on Maggie. Anyways, I'd like to write something zombie apocalypse but don't have any ideas, so.

Most of these ideas and prompts aren't fully thought out yet, but I'd work on them as I'd go. Anyways, thought I’d put these out there, so let me know what y’all think!

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Fixing Joan of Arc

My recent rants about Joan of Arc and her mishandling in Miraculous got me thinking about how powerful her presence could have been given that she shows up in season five. To explain this, I’m going to quickly summarize Joan's story to give you some context for how she could fit into the story of Miraculous. I’ll also note that I only started thinking about all of this because of the Wishbone episode that I brought up in that other post. An episode that used the events of the real life Joan of Arc to empower young girls, which is a concept that’s a perfect fit for a show that claims to be all about girl power.

Joan of Arc: The Highlights

Joan of Arc was a normal peasant girl with a normal peasant life until she received a divine call to help the people of France expel foreign invaders, thereby maintaining French freedom. Joan answered this call and went to join the army. It was initially hard for people to take this untrained 16-year-old seriously, but she was able to inspire them with nothing more than her own personality and her belief in her divine calling. This led her to her being granted an audience with dauphin Charles (dauphin is a French title for the oldest son of the king. Basically the prince-heir-apparent as the war Joan got involved in was largely about who would be king of France, this French prince or the king of England who was - at this point - a child).

The audience began with Joan being tested. The dauphin was not at the head of the room as one might expect. Instead, he was hidden in the crowd. This didn’t stop Joan. She was instantly able to pick the dauphin out of the crowd and declare that she was here to get him his crown, a rather miraculous event that further inspired people to believe in her.

Eventually, Joan was sent to the battlefield where her leadership was a major factor in both the French victory and in King Charles VII’s consecration (the event that makes him king instead of just the dauphin). The fighting did not stop after Charles VII was named king as the crown was still considered to be up for grabs by those who were against him. Joan continued to be part of the fighting and she was eventually captured while trying to free a French town that was under siege. Joan was then sent to Paris where she was kept prisoner, but not by invading English. Her captors were members of the French church who were supporting the English.

Because Joan claimed that she was working under the direct orders of Saints, they had to declare her a witch. Otherwise their continued undermining of Charles VII’s rule would be an act against God. This means that Joan wasn't being tried on her own merits. She'd been turned into a pawn in this bigger game and was being used by her captors to curry favor with the English invaders. Her captors ordered her to retract her claims or be named a heretic and, while she did briefly waver, Joan ultimately held true to her claims, leading her to be found guilty of heresy. After this, she was turned over to the English who burned her at the stake.

In short, Joan was a common born French teenager who went into battle for her people because she chosen to fight by a higher power and she ended up dead because she was used as a pawn by people trying to get favors out of her enemies. As far as historical figures go, I honestly can't think of a better parallel for what should have been Marinette's season five struggles. Unfortunately, that's not what season five did, but let's ignore that for now and take a moment to talk about what could have been.

I fact-checked all of the above off of the encyclopedia Britannica, which has a much more extensive article on Joan if you'd like to know more. I kept this pretty high level and tried to focus on the parallels between Marinette and Joan.

Joan & Miraculous

To give you a brief refresher, the episode Reunion is all about Alix’s brother - Jalil - doubting Ladybug due to fear for his sister and the impact of reading anti-Ladybug posts online. These aren’t things that Jalil keeps to himself, either. He reads several of these posts to Marinette’s class while Marinette is present. 

Given that this all happens soon after Marinette had some pretty massive failures, hearing these doubts should affect her. In canon, it doesn’t, she’s too busy lusting after Chat Noir, but let’s pretend for a second that she was affected. That she starts doubting herself and her mission, leading her to confess these doubts to Tikki.

Tikki suggests talking to Alya or Chat Noir, but Marinette isn’t sure about that. She doesn’t think they’ll get it because they don’t share her burden or have any helpful experience. This leads Tikki to think of her former holders which leads to Marinette summoning Joan of Arc. The episode can then progress in a similar fashion to canon  with the akuma happening soon after. This could lead to Marinette fighting Jalil, who is not a truth akuma, but an anti-Ladybug akuma.

We now have Marinette facing her doubts in physical form. She's also being attacked by someone who arguably should have been her ally, but who chose the more powerful side due to doubts and fears. And Marinette is facing all of this while being supported by a historical figure who was killed because she held firm to her cause. A figure who - as you can see above - has a lot in common with Marinette. If you must include Joan of Arc in your story, that's honestly a pretty great setup for bringing her into the show.

And yes, while Joan was a major factor in the French victory, she did die, so there's an argument to be made that she's not the right person to inspire someone who is feeling like all hope is lost, but if that's the case, then don't use Joan of Arc. You cannot wave away her death. It happened. She did not magically escape the flames to go live a love story with your hunky OC.

While I’m still not a fan of claiming that historical figures were miraculous holders, I think I’d be cool with it if they didn’t really touch on the implications of that and instead focused on honoring the history of these figures by using them as a source of inspiration. An alternative way to get around this is to have the miraculous holder be someone who knew the historical figure and helped them, but that's probably too complex for a 20-minute show that is focused on things other than talking about history.

The more I think about Joan’s story and how well it relates to Marinette’s struggles, the more disappointed I am by this squandered opportunity. It could have been such a cool episode! Bonus points if they included some lines about gender presentation because Joan got in big trouble for "dressing like a man."

[witch128chick]

Hiii!!! So as i said before, i watched last week's episode on Tuesday bc i knew i wouldn't be able to do it later. I wanted to post this earlier but i was legit exhausted so i didn't. But now here we go

King's Tide

King must be terrified and i would be too. Good thing Willow is there to calm him down. She shows the signs of her natural instinct to always support everyone else but put her own needs aside

Also i just love these two

Palismen are trembling 🥺 little babies they know their owners are really stressed out rn, they can feel it

Amity, girl, straighten your back. You'll be like your father

Hunter is a real diva. No wonder his parental figure is Darius

Little palismen cheer the witches up! (With Willow's idea)

Everyone is just hungry that's why they so grumpy

Food is literally healing here. Bc it's in a box with the Healing Coven's sign

And we learnt the origin of Amity's nickname

This is just. So cute.

The sisters!!!! (And Hooty)

Okay take a moment to think. There was an option for Lilith to be in Eda's place. She could’ve had the opportunity to protect her sister. After all those years of chasing and trying to capture her, now she really had the chance to do smth good for Eda. But she, once again, didn't let herself be saved. She wanted to protect Lilith. Gosh i just... i can't. I love them sm

Also Hooty is this emoji: 🥺

I love the detail that Eda kissed Hooty's head. He's part of the owl family after all and no matter how annoying he is, Eda cares about him like he cares about her

Kiddos!!! And Bump

And Odalia

It's a sad parallel to this episode but it's still nice to see the older witches as kids

Meanwhile Luz: the ultimate badass

Camila’s Boiling Isles twin!!!

I really thought their plan would work!!! I mean it was a good plan

Ughhh annoying coven heads

"We'LL bE LiKe RoYaLtiEs" oh darling you'll be soo surprised

"Yyyyikes mah dude"

ICONIC. LUZ YOU'RE ICONIC!!!

She's being slowly petrified and she's like "man your fashion taste is shit" and Belos goes "hmm valid argument" 😭😭😭

Okay well i'm out of pics so i'll come back soon with a reblog!

[buffyfan145]

Today's latest season 2 "Rings of Power" scoops were focused more on Galadriel!!! 😀 Big update too to the spoilers they had a few months ago about her and Adar, as well as Elrond, and what happens in the finale!!! Doing some speculation of my own here too but these also seem to indicate being Haladriel spoilers too.

The first part of the spoilers is that during the 2 episode battle, which is the sack of Eregion, that ends the season Galadriel will at first be helping the elves to get to safety before fighting.

Then the next part was an update to the spoiler a few months back that Adar is going to capture Galadriel. This actually happens during the finale and the fall of Eregion!!! 😮 A lot of us thought this was earlier in the season but that's not the case according to FOF. It sounds like the season might end with her being captured by Adar and it might be on Sauron/Halbrand's orders. A lot of us figured Adar was doing this on his own or Galadriel set herself up to be captured (and finds Celeborn) early in the season but if this really is the finale it seems like Sauron/Halbrand wants her and possibly is going to take her back to Mordor with him. We know he'll be in his Annatar/"original form" while he's back in Eregion at the end of the season but is supposed to switch back to Halbrand for the rest of the series while he still has a "fair form". This also weirdly parallels what happens to Galadriel's daughter Celebrían when she's captured by the orcs in the 3rd Age, so it's interesting that the show seems to be doing the same with her mother.

I personally as a Haladriel shipper don't mind this at all and if it sets up a season 3 storyline where Galadriel is being held by Halbrand/Sauron in Mordor. He wants her at his side and might actually force it to happen. Though I actually do think he'll be angry at how Galadriel was treated when she's captured as FOF says she does get injured. There's been theories for a while that Adar will get killed off at the end of s2 too and this could be what makes Halbrand/Sauron do it. A lot of us have written this weirdly too in our fics but that even though Halbrand/Sauron captures her, he is more kind to her and won't hurt her and I can see him telling his followers to treat her like the queen he sees and knows she is. Could be wrong but if he takes her I do see that happening.

Also Celeborn is present to see Galadriel get captured. Another part of these scoops this week says that he, Elrond, and Selina Lo's elf character are all present when this happens. Even says Elrond and Adar get into a huge fight as they try to save Galadriel, with him throwing Adar to the floor by the neck!!! 😮 FOF doesn't know for sure but it seems like they fail and Galadriel is indeed taken to Halbrand/Sauron.

So this is going to be very interesting how this plays out and possibly sets up season 3, especially for us Haladriel shippers. LOL 😏

[goldensmilingbird]

Please tell us about your new blorbo Neel! What captured your attention, what kind of character is he and how is the overall show he is starring in?

Thank you for asking :)

Sorry it took a while to answer, I have lots of thoughts but they were all kinda scrambled.

Okay, so, the show.

I think I need to explain the basics of the plot first. So there's two storylines. First one is about how the Duke of Normandy died and his heir (our main character) escaped, and now he pretends to be a normal peasant boy named Hugo, while various lords and ladies are trying to get their hands on him and the throne. And Neel's mother, Dame Neel (I guess it's a family name), promised to her husband that she'll put their son on the throne by the time he's back. Keep in mind that Neel and "Hugo" are both twelve. These boys are not even in their teens yet.

The second storyline is about how there is a giant dragon Loki trapped underground, and that if Hugo doesn't learn runes and renew his ancestor's spell, he'll free himself and the world will literally end. So basically he has to fake being a normal boy with a normal life so he doesn't get kidnapped or killed, but also save the world. That's the gist of it.

I watched about half of the show so far (14 out of 26 episodes), and I really enjoy it. The beginning might feel kinda slow, but it gets better. The animation is 3D with this 2D look. The first time I saw an image from the show, I thought it looked cool, and it kinda reminded me of the Cartoon Saloon style, especially the backgrounds. And turns out the studio (Les Armateurs) did work with them on Secret of Kells, and also they were involved in some other cool stuff I watched or heard of, like Long Long Holiday, Ernest and Celestine (the movies and the show), Triplets of Belleville, etc. But I'm kinda getting off-topic. Point is, they got experience.

But back to Neel. His mom is very protective of him, but she's also strict, and he really wants to impress her, only to end up disappointing her again. He's physically weak, not good at handling weapons and overall not great viking material. His father is out of the picture, but his mother brings him up once in a "what would he think of you now?" way, and he also has abandonment issues after his father leaving him.

So far we got absent parent, strict parent, abandonment issues, low self-esteem, he's isolated from other kids his age and runs away from the castle multiple times, his mom even gets sick because of a magical artifact sapping her energy at some point... This boy is so Adrien-coded, I swear.

There is one other close person in his life though, the only one who shows him affection - and that's the head guard Ulrich, the guy who is hunting down the main character. And he is that one person Neel is afraid would leave him. Neel absolutely adores this guy. He's so happy every time he sees him, I find it adorable.

He wants to go out there and help him and fight by his side, but Ulrich's main job is to keep him safe, so he's not letting that happen. Did I mention Neel almost died one time? That was because he sneaked away to try and help Ulrich again.

And Ulrich is interesting to me because he's so loyal to this family that serving them is pretty much his only goal. And even if he might feel guilty about some of the horrible things he's done, he can still justify them to himself. At some point, looking after Neel became more than just a duty though. In his own words, he has the weakness to consider him his own son.

There are lot of familial ties in this show. Hugo loses his parents and has to live with a new family. His mentor/father figure, who Ulrich killed, parallels Ulrich himself. Even the other antagonists are a family. I just really enjoy that.

I'm hoping Neel would be more involved in the second part of the season, I feel like him and Hugo are starting to become friends, and who knows, maybe even his father will come back. And there was a plot twist in the last episode that I kinda didn't expect, so I'm interested to see where it goes.

Anyway, it's a fun show, and it has some good characters and story. And if any of you like medieval settings or Norse mythology, you might enjoy that as well. One thing that upsets me though is that this show is only available in English on a right-wing streaming service, and the money from it go to like, the worst kind of people. So here are the links where you can watch the show for free!

First ten episodes in English dub (new ones come out on Saturdays)

English subtitle files

French episodes with French subs

Thanks for coming to my Neel talk 🙏

And please, check out the show

[drbtinglecannon]

NEW OFFICIAL TRAILER FOR "FOR THE FUTURE"

(I haven't watched the leaked episode, if you did, please do not post any spoilers. You will be blocked if you do.)

King!!! King is back!!! Unfortunately it comes at the cost of him obviously being the Collector's servant basically. At least he still has François.

King also reads a book about the Collector, similar to how the end of S1 he read a book about Belos. It's an easy way to add lore to the show, and it calls back to another time he did so

Not only do we get curly redhead Lilith, but she has a pixie cut now too!!! Her glasses are gone tho :(

All of the Coven Heads (but Terra?) got turned to puppets ;___; as have most other citizens including Hooty, Principal Bump & the other Hexside teachers, and some of the other student body like the grudgby players

Also Eda does not seem to have a prosthetic like most people predicted, which makes me wonder what happened to Alador

ALSO ALSO SHORT HAIR EDA 💖

Mattholomule grew the worst facial hair lol (I am certain the 😑 expressions everyone made in that last promo image was at Mattholomule). Skara is there too!!!! And Barkus (maybe we'll get a gustholomule moment)

Eda can still lose control of the Owl Beast in Harpy mode -- and I can't blame her considering the circumstances. Her eyes turn fully black in that inky drop motion like back in s1

I wonder if her short hair affects the look

Huntlow moment 💚💛

Dana was right, sparkly is a good word to describe this episode.

I'm not sure how I feel by the idea that almost all adults got captured, it does feel specifically like The Collector (a child like God) did it on purpose, but it still is kinda :/ to know most of my fav supporting cast are puppets now to conveniently write them all out of the episode so as to keep the cast from bloating. Like I get why it was done but I'm still salty about it

The Coven Heads (again except maybe Terra?? Idk why she wasn't there? Did she pledge loyalty well enough to not need to be puppetfied? Did she escape? Die? Lol could you imagine) all have slight whimsical features added to their designs, as with everyone who got puppetfied, but for once they're all moving & working in tandem haha. Raine's close up not only killed me, but gave a good callback to when they got captured by Kikimora then "brainwashed" for weeks afterwards. The parallels of Raine pretending to be an enemy vs now they are but completely against their will. Bah. I'm dying, I'm afraid to see Eda's face in that scene. ;__; I'm really unhappy to have any Raeda fluff or bonding during this special (or suggested to have happened in between KT & FTF) robbed from us, but angst is classic Raeda vibes so I'm not surprised

I did also notice we didn't see any hints of Amity, Gus, or Willow's families at all. All we know is Eda & Lilith seem to have escaped puppetfication. I have a feeling Hooty took the puppetfication blast for Lilith in that moment

I'm stoked about Lilith having red hair again, and I was not expecting her & Eda to both cut their hair short! Everyone's getting hair style changes!

This will definitely be a Collector lore heavy episode, if only for the fact King was reading that book about them. I wonder if there used to be more children of the stars, and where the others went/are if there were

And lastly I'm at the photo cap but Belos is there too. He is using glyphs to burrow into some area, and he's killing the wildlife as he goes. Y'know, classic Belos behavior. I wonder if he's trying to get to where Caleb's mangled remains are, and if so what the plan is from there. I doubt Belos will play a large part in this episode as it seems very heavily focused on The Collector instead, which I'm fine with as I figured the final confrontation with Belos was gonna be the last special, what with him being the main villain of the show.

Despite any hangups I have I'm very excited to see the special! I know Dana & the crew worked hard on it

[madwheelerz]

Another Home Post

I figured that I could make a post about where the idea behind the manifestation theory comes from, talk about my thoughts behind timeline 0 and why I think there is a timeline 0, and what I personally think will happen with Will under this type of storyline or what I think has already been happening. I had some realizations while making this so I’ll talk about what the upside-down might be later. Even without many pictures this is long.

Why do I think it’s a game?

I think it’s a game because the idea of some things simply not being real or being controlled by a kid make quiet a few things make sense. The setting makes sense because it’s the home of the kids. The idea of a random government lab going to a small town in Indiana to run evil government experiments on little kids is one thing but add onto that a random group of Russians invading directly after the government base is deactivated and it’s extremely difficult to believe.

They could try to convince us. The Russians could’ve been clumsy and revealed a clue that could later be used to decipher the code for the machine, they could’ve needed to hack things for the code, or to find something hidden to figure out the code, but instead they made it a constant. They could’ve played it off and acted as if it wasn’t strange, but instead they have Suzie go over the information with Dustin to show just how absurd the idea is.

Why? It’s one thing for the code to be lightwork, it’s an entirely different thing to reinforce that idea instead of shutting it down. There’s also the linkage of everything to D&D. There’s this idea that the boys initially linked the idea of what took Will being related to the game, likely due to the it was a seven conversation, but the reality is that El is the one to really link the game to the events. Why would she do this if it wasn’t relevant? El isn’t fond of D&D and she doesn’t care much for it, but she isn’t wrong. Most of the events that occur can be traced back to the game.

The first thing we witness is Will being whisked away by the Demogorgon similar to the game. Before this Will was warned against informing Mike about the bad roll, but he does so anyway. Mike is very spacey during the entire conversation and overall, it’s a strange look.

Okay so why the manifestation theory though?

Mike is in the position of the DM when we’re introduced to him so if the game has been a game since the beginning it’s likely he would have started it. He has a peculiar understanding of not just the upside-down, but of El’s powers and the goals of the lab. The upside-down also seems very reflective of what Mike wants.

Mike’s playlist is also very peculiar when you cut out the romance songs. Albums referencing timelines, parallel lines, innerworlds. A song literally called “The Vale of Shadows”, interesting for someone who’s never been there. A song about voodoo against Vecna’s puppet-like imagery. The summary referring to a 5-hour D&D-session when none of the D&D sessions we see have ever been that short and the playlist is off by a little under two-hours, but the number does perfectly capture the number of seasons for the show.

Mike is referred to as the heart and leader in the most recent season and one thing that I don’t understand is why people think that’s a good thing. Will implies that without Mike the party would fall apart, which seems to be a pretty clear case of foreshadowing. What confuses we is why everyone thought the role of the heart was going to mean anything good when the scene before the van scene was of El being revived from a stopped heart and Max’s stopped heart is associated with Mike’s monologue and Mike is kept in frame for part of the speech about Max’s stopped heart.

This season is also the first time we hear of a leader being accused of being behind everything. I mean Jason attributed everything from the beginning to the current events happening in the show to the game. When considering Eddie this doesn’t make sense. When considering Mike? When considering that we pan directly over his family when “hiding him” comes up? When considering Mike is a leader who has been there from the beginning? It begins to click. It also explains why they would’ve even included that absurdly long speech in the first place.

Timeline 0: What is it and why?

When first coming up with the manifestation theory almost everything was straightforward. Everything except the “why?”. It was easy to see where the idea of a game coming to life was coming from and that Mike would be doing it, but what wasn’t easy was understanding why Mike would suddenly start bringing his game to life. So, I went back a little.

What we know about powers is that they’re pretty trauma based and generally unlocked that way. Honestly, given the option my guess would’ve been time powers for Mike because of how much he is associated with running out of time and the constant clock imagery, but I thought maybe that wasn’t what was happening except. The time references were insistent, so I decided to take another look at them.

When Will tells Mike that “it was a seven” the Wheeler car next to them has a seven on it.  

Which is interesting because later we see Jonathan go to Lonnie’s looking for Will. He tries multiple doors and some of them are locked. Lonnie is aware that Will is missing, but his entire demeanor doesn’t really give off the picture of innocence especially knowing he could have called Joyce back and his response as to why he didn’t was “I don’t know,”. Something is up with that man.

There’s also all the parallels between Will and Billy and the Phineas Cage thing. No longer Cage -> No longer Will -> Billy. The scene itself goes from Will to Max because Max is observing him, but the two of them aren’t really that different. Billy and Will, on the other hand, absolutely are, and it fits the theme of season three referencing Billy as “another” Will. William -> Will -> Billy. Both Will and Billy are alternative nicknames for William. No longer Will, but now Billy, maybe?

So how does this tie in with everything? Will is referred to as “zombie boy” when he comes back and prior to his disappearance into the upside-down he’s dressed like a time-traveler. I think there are two timelines here. One where Will is taken by the upside-down and one where Will is murdered. By who? Who other than Lonnie?

The show enforces the idea that we are in the one. The one timeline where Will isn’t taken by his Lonnie. In the other timelines, the 99, Lonnie is the culprit. He just doesn’t happen to be this time.

Let’s recap with Lonnie. He’s evasive as though he’s done something wrong, one of the doors in his house is locked when Jonathan goes to check, he draws attention to his new car, and he’s keeping tabs well enough to know when Will’s body is found and how it’s suspected that he died.

A bit odd for someone who didn’t even seem interested enough to call his ex-wife back. We only see Lonnie in relation to Will’s disappearance and death. We see him when Jonathan goes looking for Will and again at Will’s funeral. These are some very bad associations. What does Billy hint at for the first timeline? I think that Billy’s entire subplot in season three serves as a hint to what happened to Will in the first timeline.

Billy is kidnapped by the mind flayer and eventually killed by it. Will isn’t killed by Lonnie but is instead abducted at first. He’s killed later and his body is left at the quarry. Let’s look at Billy’s first victim, Heather. He kidnaps her and stuffs her in the trunk of his car, gagged and fearful. Who else was suspected of being in someone’s trunk? Will. Jonathan checks Lonnie’s trunk specifically before he leaves, and this is particularly interesting when we remember the seven on the Wheeler’s car during Mike and Will’s exchange. There is a car involved in this.

It's likely Will was drowned prior to his body being left at the quarry hence all the ice bath imagery and the comment about being frozen half to death. So Lonnie kidnaps Will, makes him do things ala “he made me do it”, Will stands up to him, and Lonnie drowns him. It’s interesting to note that the memory connected to Billy’s death and makes him stand up to the mind flayer, the one of his mother, involved a seven foot wave.

There’s also a shared song between Will and Billy’s playlist, “Carry on My Wayward Son,”. This would explain why Billy’s playlist is important to enough to stay up and why the “Letter to Willy” vs “Dear Billy”. Why that similarity between Will and Billy is pushed.

So, what’s going on with Will then?

His time is broken. He isn’t meant to be here. The rules of space-time were broken to offer him a chance to live and it’s become a consequence. That’s why Will’s watch is often covered and why he may glitch next to clocks almost like he’s fading out of existence.

If Mike is the one making the story, then it’s one crafted for Will. It’s exactly what we see depicted in the beginning of the series during the first two D&D games. Mike is the one making the plot, but the one whose decision decides if they lose or win is Will.

Anyway. I might make a version of this with more pictures in the future.

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Come to think of it, has anyone properly adapted The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen to the screen? If not, here are some ideas (tagging @dagny-hashtaggart and @thatonemushroom here):

First, make Villiers and Clarke female! On one hand I love me an evil woman like Helen Vaughan, and I particularly appreciate her character as an example of a sexually predatory woman who's played for horror (as opposed to either for titillation, or for mean jokes about how "ugly" she is). But on the other hand I would appreciate some more unambiguously heroic female representation to balance the evil out.

Make Villiers and Clarke sexually forward but in a positive way, to clarify that Helen is evil not because she's a slut but because she's a predator. Could sum this up in an exchange during the confrontation at the end, with Helen trying to act friendly toward the heroes like "I've been told you two know how to have fun; that makes three of us" and the heroes retorting "Where's the fun in any of what you've wrought?"

I'm on the fence about whether to keep the Victorian setting. But if not, I'd like to establish that Dr. Raymond is on the CIA's payroll as part of MKULTRA. This would most likely place Helen's birth sometime in the 1950s or '60s, meaning the main story would have to take place no earlier than the '70s.

Updating the setting would also present an opportunity to make the cast more ethnically diverse—though I figure even in the original Victorian setting, it wouldn't feel too out of place for one or both of the heroes to be Romani, or Jewish, or a STEM major visiting Britain from elsewhere in the empire (perhaps the Caribbean, going by the European-sounding names Villiers and Clarke) to study. Of course, considering what I said earlier about giving the heroines a sex life, one would have to be careful not to veer into stereotypes about hypersexual women of color—ideally their sexuality would be framed the same way that a white male character's would be.

I'm also on the fence about how much influence Raymond had on Vaughan when she was growing up. On one hand I don't like the trope of "behind every bitch is a bastard who made her that way"; women are fully capable of committing evil of their own volition. On the other, I do want to avoid the potentially ableist angle of a freakish baby that's born evil, so chalking it up to her upbringing by Raymond could mitigate that. It'd also be thematically appropriate to highlight the parallels between Dr. Raymond violating Mary's consent and Helen Vaughan violating all those men's consent, and it'd illustrate how patriarchy facilitates sexual abuse against both men and women.

How to capture Helen's beautiful but undefinably monstrous appearance? Use Zemeckis-style CGI to place the character firmly in the Uncanny Valley, but leave the other characters normal while Helen is walking around looking like she stepped right out of the 2004 Polar Express movie.

On the other hand, her transformation at the end should use some gory practical effects. Maybe tap the FX department behind the 2016 Canadian horror film The Void to do this scene.

Speaking of The Void, Evan Stern's delivery during the police interrogation at the 45:20 mark (warning: finger torture) is how I imagine Charles Herbert recounting his story to Villiers. Okay, the context is different because Herbert is willingly divulging all this to an old friend without any police brutality necessary. But Stern's panicked tone in this scene (coming at least as much from his previous encounter with an eldritch cult as from the present threat of torture) sounds just right to convey Herbert's trauma. Hell, we could even cast Stern himself (whom Letterkenny fans may recognize as Roald) as Herbert!

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Young Justice: Phantoms takes place almost ten years after the events of Season one episodes one and two (it'll be exactly ten years when they hit July 5th).

The two parter series intro had Robin, Aqualad and Kid Flash finding and rescuing Superboy from Cadmus and then forming together to make the Team™. "The four of us started this team" - Dick Grayson.

I think that the show runners will deliberately include callbacks to Season 1, episode 1&2 in this season to emphasize how far the characters have come.

It seems rather fitting, doesn't it?

Conner needs to be rescued again. Dick and Kaldur were shown in the teaser in the tower of Fate together. Given that Zatanna is trying to figure out Conner's situation it only makes sense that they would be on Conner's rescue mission.

Why just Dick and Kaldur? Well, we see Zatanna with and without the helmet of Fate on in the teaser. It makes sense to me that she started without it and then had to put it on later to perform the spell to transport Dick and Kaldur. Fate wouldn't let her leave as long as she was wearing the helmet.

Rocket seems to be in space, so unless she boom tubes she wouldn't be a part of Conner's rescue mission. (Although I suspect that she's following a non magic angle to figure out what's happening with Conner so she will still probably be involved)

M'gann isn't present. I'm assuming this is because no one wants to tell her until they are positive about what's going on. Likewise, they probably didn't tell Artemis because she just had a massive depressive episode over Conner and if they were wrong they'd reopen that wound.

So just Dick and Kaldur rescuing Conner then, right? Wrong.

Look I'm not sure how or why but I know Wally will be there come hell or high water. There's not a single doubt in my mind that he is alive and returning this season and this would be the absolute best time for him to come back.

So, with all that being said, here are some scenes from Season 1, episodes 1 and 2 that I would want to see paralleled:

So right off the bat this whole scene is gold. Kaldur, Wally and Dick disobeying direct orders with a loophole, Wally's ride or die attitude, Kaldur's little "they're all about Justice" line. It's amazing. I'm not sure who they'd be rebelling against in Phantoms (possibly the Legion?) but I want to see this scene paralleled.

These first two episodes do a great job of highlighting not only each character's flaws but also their limitations. Wally is impulsive and doesn't think before he talks. He struggles to run up walls and doesn't wait around for a plan. Dick doesn't take his team into account. He doesn't know how to communicate and assumes his team knows what the plan is already. He doesn't know when to stop and pushes the team way past their abilities, which ultimately gets them captured. Kaldur doesn't know how to lead. He knows that Dick and Wally are making mistakes and he knows what they should be doing but he doesn't assert himself. He protests and complains but does nothing to stop them. And last but not least, Conner is a ball of rage with so many issues I can't even count them.

I want to see how they've grown. I want to see them in this position again and see how they've conquered their flaws and pushed past them.

Conner in a pod. That's it. Just Conner in a pod.

They have to pose like this again! The four of them in this order exactly. Also Dick and Wally should high five (with or without the broken ribs)

These are just my thoughts/opinions/theories so feel free to add on any scenes that you think should be paralleled!

[uomo-accattivante]

Excellent article about bringing a re-make of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage to fruition, and the twenty-year friendship that Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain share:

There were days on the shoot for “Scenes From a Marriage,” a five-episode limited series that premieres Sept. 12 on HBO, when Oscar Isaac resented the crew.

The problem wasn’t the crew members themselves, he told me on a video call in March. But the work required of him and his co-star, Jessica Chastain, was so unsparingly intimate — “And difficult!” Chastain added from a neighboring Zoom window — that every time a camera operator or a makeup artist appeared, it felt like an intrusion.

On his other projects, Isaac had felt comfortably distant from the characters and their circumstances — interplanetary intrigue, rogue A.I. But “Scenes” surveys monogamy and parenthood, familiar territory. Sometimes Isaac would film a bedtime scene with his onscreen child (Lily Jane) and then go home and tuck his own child into the same model of bed as the one used onset, accessorized with the same bunny lamp, and not know exactly where art ended and life began.

“It was just a lot,” he said.

Chastain agreed, though she put it more strongly. “I mean, I cried every day for four months,” she said.

Isaac, 42, and Chastain, 44, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. And they have channeled two decades of friendship, admiration and a shared and obsessional devotion to craft into what Michael Ellenberg, one of the series’s executive producers, called “five hours of naked, raw performance.” (That nudity is metaphorical, mostly.)

“For me it definitely felt incredibly personal,” Chastain said on the call in the spring, about a month after filming had ended. “That’s why I don’t know if I have another one like this in me. Yeah, I can’t decide that. I can’t even talk about it without. …” She turned away from the screen. (It was one of several times during the call that I felt as if I were intruding, too.)

The original “Scenes From a Marriage,” created by Ingmar Bergman, debuted on Swedish television in 1973. Bergman’s first television series, its six episodes trace the dissolution of a middle-class marriage. Starring Liv Ullmann, Bergman’s ex, it drew on his own past relationships, though not always directly.

“When it comes to Bergman, the relationship between autobiography and fiction is extremely complicated,” said Jan Holmberg, the chief executive of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation.

A sensation in Sweden, it was seen by most of the adult population. And yes, sure, correlation does not imply causation, but after its debut, Swedish divorce were rumored to have doubled. Holmberg remembers watching a rerun as a 10-year-old.

“It was a rude awakening to adult life,” he said.

The writer and director Hagai Levi saw it as a teenager, on Israeli public television, during a stint on a kibbutz. “I was shocked,” he said. The series taught him that a television series could be radical, that it could be art. When he created “BeTipul,” the Israeli precursor to “In Treatment,” he used “Scenes” as proof of the concept “that two people can talk for an hour and it can work,” Levi said. (Strangely, “Scenes” also inspired the prime-time soap “Dallas.”)

So when Daniel Bergman, Ingmar Bergman’s youngest son, approached Levi about a remake, he was immediately interested.

But the project languished, in part because loving a show isn’t reason enough to adapt it. Divorce is common now — in Sweden, and elsewhere — and the relationship politics of the original series, in which the male character deserts his wife and young children for an academic post, haven’t aged particularly well.

Then about two years ago, Levi had a revelation. He would swap the gender roles. A woman who leaves her marriage and child in pursuit of freedom (with a very hot Israeli entrepreneur in place of a visiting professorship) might still provoke conversation and interest.

So the Marianne and Johan of the original became Mira and Jonathan, with a Boston suburb (re-created in a warehouse just north of New York City), stepping in for the Stockholm of the original. Jonathan remains an academic though Mira, a lawyer in the original, is now a businesswoman who out-earns him.

Casting began in early 2020. After Isaac met with Levi, he wrote to Chastain to tell her about the project. She wasn’t available. The producers cast Michelle Williams. But the pandemic reshuffled everyone’s schedules. When production was ready to resume, Williams was no longer free. Chastain was. “That was for me the most amazing miracle,” Levi said.

Isaac and Chastain met in the early 2000s at Juilliard. He was in his first year; she, in her third. He first saw her in a scene from a classical tragedy, slapping men in the face as Helen of Troy. He was friendly with her then-boyfriend, and they soon became friends themselves, bonding through the shared trauma of an acting curriculum designed to break its students down and then build them back up again. Isaac remembered her as “a real force of nature and solid, completely solid, with an incredible amount of integrity,” he said.

In the next window, Chastain blushed. “He was super talented,” she said. “But talented in a way that wasn’t expected, that’s challenging and pushing against constructs and ideas.” She introduced him to her manager, and they celebrated each other’s early successes and went to each other’s premieres. (A few of those photos are used in “Scenes From a Marriage” as set dressing.)

In 2013, Chastain was cast in J.C. Chandor’s “A Most Violent Year,”opposite Javier Bardem. When Bardem dropped out, Chastain campaigned for Isaac to have the role. Weeks before shooting, they began to meet, fleshing out the back story of their characters — a husband and wife trying to corner the heating oil market in 1981 New York — the details of the marriage, business, life.

It was their first time working together, and each felt a bond that went deeper than a parallel education and approach. “Something connects us that’s stronger than any ideas of character or story or any of that,” Isaac said. “There’s something else that’s more about like, a shared existence.”

Chandor noticed how they would support each other on set, and challenge each other, too, giving each other the freedom to take the characters’ relationship to dark and dangerous places. “They have this innate trust with each other,” Chandor said.

That trust eliminated the need for actorly tricks or shortcuts, in part because they know each other’s tricks too well. Their motto, Isaac said, was, “Let’s figure this [expletive] out together and see what’s the most honest thing we can do.”

Moni Yakim, Juilliard’s celebrated movement instructor, has followed their careers closely and he noted what he called the “magnetism and spiritual connection” that they suggested onscreen in the film.

“It’s a kind of chemistry,” Yakim said. “They can read each other’s mind and you as an audience, you can sense it.”

Telepathy takes work. When they knew that shooting “Scenes From a Marriage” could begin, Chastain bought a copy of “All About Us,” a guided journal for couples, and filled in her sections in character as Mira. Isaac brought it home and showed it to his wife, the filmmaker Elvira Lind.

“She was like, ‘You finally found your match,’” Isaac recalled. “’Someone that is as big of a nerd as you are.’”

The actors rehearsed, with Levi and on their own, talking their way through each long scene, helping each other through the anguished parts. When production had to halt for two weeks, they rehearsed then, too.

Watching these actors work reminded Amy Herzog, a writer and executive producer on the series, of race horses in full gallop. “These are two people who have so much training and skill,” she said. “Because it’s an athletic feat, what they were being asked to do.”

But training and skill and the “All About Us” book hadn’t really prepared them for the emotional impact of actually shooting “Scenes From a Marriage.” Both actors normally compartmentalize when they work, putting up psychic partitions between their roles and themselves. But this time, the partitions weren’t up to code.

“I knew I was in trouble the very first week,” Chastain said.

She couldn’t hide how the scripts affected her, especially from someone who knows her as well as Isaac does. “I just felt so exposed,” she said. “This to me, more than anything I’ve ever worked on, was definitely the most open I’ve ever been.”

“It felt so dangerous,” she said.

I visited the set in February (after multiple Covid-19 tests and health screenings) during a final day of filming. It was the quietest set I had ever seen: The atmosphere was subdued, reverent almost, a crew and a studio space stripped down to only what two actors would need to do the most passionate and demanding work of their careers.

Isaac didn’t know if he would watch the completed series. “It really is the first time ever, where I’ve done something where I’m totally fine never seeing this thing,” he said. “Because I’ve really lived through it. And in some ways I don’t want whatever they decide to put together to change my experience of it, which was just so intense.”

The cameras captured that intensity. Though Chastain isn’t Mira and Isaac isn’t Jonathan, each drew on personal experience — their parents’ marriages, past relationships — in ways they never had. Sometimes work on the show felt like acting, and sometimes the work wasn’t even conscious. There’s a scene in the harrowing fourth episode in which they both lie crumpled on the floor, an identical stress vein bulging in each forehead.

“It’s my go-to move, the throbbing forehead vein,” Isaac said on a follow-up video call last month. Chastain riffed on the joke: “That was our third year at Juilliard, the throb.”

By then, it had been five months since the shoot wrapped. Life had returned to something like normal. Jokes were possible again. Both of them seemed looser, more relaxed. (Isaac had already poured himself one tequila shot and was ready for another.) No one cried.

Chastain had watched the show with her husband. And Isaac, despite his initial reluctance, had watched it, too. It didn’t seem to have changed his experience.

“I’ve never done anything like it,” he said. “And I can’t imagine doing anything like it again.”

###

[sokkastyles]

Zutara Month Day 10: Oma and Shu

I’ve seen some people point out that Zutara doesn’t necessarily fit Oma and Shu because the Oma and Shu myth is more Romeo and Juliet than enemies to lovers, and those people are not necessarily wrong. Romeo and Juliet, just like Oma and Shu, were never themselves enemies. They did nothing but love each other, but were forbidden from being together because of the feud. Zutara, in most interpretations, is less a “forbidden” romance and more a transition from enemies to friends to lovers. Most people imagine them growing to love each other after becoming friends, often after Zuko’s redemption and the end of the war. Nonetheless, the Oma and Shu story does share several parallels with Zutara that many fans have picked up on. What I want to do is examine some of these parallels from a meta angle, to look at the Oma and Shu story as it appears in the series and other similar stories that appear in ATLA, and to also compare them to similar stories in the real world, and analyze a bit the popularity of these various tales of forbidden love, why they are popular, and what their purpose is, as well as how Zutara fits into all this.

In universe, the Oma and Shu story, in addition to being a love story, is also an origin myth of sorts for the Earth Kingdom. It explains the creation of the city of Omashu, as well as telling the story of some of the first humans to learn earthbending. The message of the story, in addition to being a tale about love thriving between two unlikely people, and a cautionary tale about what happens when love is prevented from flourishing, is also a message about love being an act of creation and a force of transformation.

Love is brightest in the dark.

This sentence is a paradox, but it fits with the theme of balance that the show comes back to again and again, of breaking down barriers and deconstructing dichotomies to create something new, something more whole than the original. Something mirroring the harmony of yin and yang.

The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same. We are all one people, but we live as if divided.

The above quote by Guru Pathik is also similar to Iroh’s philosophy, which he tries to teach Zuko.

It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you take it from only one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations will help you become whole.

Iroh also says something in “The Crossroads of Destiny” that echoes the Oma and Shu story.

Iroh: Perfection and power are overrated. I think you were very wise to choose happiness and love.

Aang: What happens if we can't save anyone and beat Azula? Without the Avatar State, what if I'm not powerful enough?

Iroh: I don't know the answer. Sometimes, life is like this dark tunnel. You can't always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving, [Aang earthbends the rocks away one last time. Iroh's fire blows out. He smiles.] you will come to a better place.

Iroh says that Aang is wise to choose love over power, while walking through a dark tunnel, and advises Aang to trust in the darkness to bring him to the light. Meanwhile, Zuko and Katara, two people on opposite sides of a war, share a moment of unlikely tenderness in a cave lit by glowing crystals.

Zuko in the crystal catacombs does what Iroh has been trying to teach him to do, to let go of pride and the need for power, and to instead embrace compassion and humility. Which is what he does when he apologizes to Katara. This is also part of what stories like Romeo and Juliet teach us, that pride and petty grievances are destructive, and that only by embracing love do we become whole.

I know the prompt is Oma and Shu, but thinking about that story and its place in the narrative made me think about other mythic stories that appear in the series, so let’s look at another one that has significance for zutara: Love Amongst the Dragons, Ursa’s favorite play that she took young Zuko and Azula to see every year.

The actual story of Love Amongst the Dragons, according to the ATLA wiki, is this:

The play features the Dragon Emperor, bound to mortal form by the Dark Water Spirit, and forced to adopt the alias of Noren. The humble experience results in Noren falling in love with a mortal, and through this love he is able to break free of his curse. The play concludes with Noren defeating the Dark Water Spirit and embracing his mortal girlfriend, revealed to be the Dragon Empress.

What struck me when I found this description was that this is, with some slight changes, pretty much the Chinese myth of the marriage between Dragon and Phoenix, a representation for yin and yang and harmony in marriage, and which I compared in a meta to zutara as well.

Like the Oma and Shu story, it is a story about unlikely love, and about crossing divisions. It also has a lot of similarities with various myths involving shapeshifting love-interests, often referred to as “animal bride/husband” myths (which beauty and the beast is a subset of).

The symbolism of the tale in-universe is in its connection to Ursa, and thus Zuko’s connection to his mother. Zuko’s connection to his mother is contrasted with his connection to his father, which is representative of Zuko’s destructive side. When Zuko was trying to capture the Avatar, he was searching for his father’s approval, to become someone that would earn his father’s love. Ursa, meanwhile, taught Zuko kindness and compassion, and told him that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t the most powerful or strong. That Ursa took Zuko to see this particular play is significant, a play about a godlike being, the Dragon Emperor, being humbled and learning to love.

Only with your glory hidden in false form could you recognize my devotion.

Though different, and originating in a different nation, this is another tale about love shining through the dark, about letting go of pride and choosing compassion. Animal bride/husband myths are often about seeing past what is hidden to see the truth. They are stories of transformation, and like the Oma and Shu story, are about the transformative power of love.

It’s also from this play that Zuko gets his Blue Spirit alter ego, which Zuko uses as an exploration of his own identity apart from being the Fire Nation prince. In this story the same mask is worn by the villainous Dark Water Spirit. It is very interesting that Zuko uses an identity associated with water for this purpose. Also, like the Blue Spirit, the Dark Water Spirit seems to be a bit on the morally ambiguous side. Even though the spirit is defeated at the end of the story, its motivation for transforming the Dragon Emperor seems to be to teach him humility, and this is a message the play seems to promote.

Zuko and Azula’s dialogue from the above comic pages is interesting because it expands on what we already know about both characters. Zuko complains about always having to play the villain, just as he was made a scapegoat by his father and sister, and his adapting of the Blue Spirit identity is essentially him reclaiming that identity that was forced on him while trying to figure out who he really is. Azula sees herself as the Dragon Emperor, but she misunderstands the message of the story completely, and it’s not a coincidence that she talks over the love scene in the comic above and responds angrily and pridefully to the man who tries to shush her. Similar to Ozai when he names himself the Phoenix King, ironically misinterpreting the actual myth. I also think there’s something interesting to say about gender here, as this post points out. Not only does Ozai associate himself with a female figure, but Azula associates herself with the male Dragon Emperor, while Zuko is associated with the more feminine water spirit (water being a feminine element.) However, by the end of the series, Zuko embodies the transformed Dragon Emperor, while Katara I associated before with the Phoenix/Dragon Empress, as she is associated with healing and rebirth. Also notice the red and blue color coding in the comic page above, both with the Water Spirit and Dragon Emperor and in the coloring of the two lovers.

This also brings me to another play present in the series, the play that the gaang goes to see performed by the Ember Island Players. The same players that Zuko says his mother took him to see. The play we see them put on in the series is a Fire Nation propaganda play, promoting Ozai and the war. I actually can’t imagine that Love Amongst the Dragons, a play about a Dragon Emperor learning humility, was very popular during Ozai’s reign. We hear about it being performed before Ozai became Fire Lord, but we can assume that those visits to the theatre stopped after Ursa’s disappearance. The only other time we hear about that particular play being performed is after the end of the war. This leads me to imagine that it was necessary for the Ember Island Players to find a different play to perform while Ozai was in charge. While the play is not necessarily subverting Fire Nation superiority (the villain is a water spirit, after all), it is confrontational enough that I can imagine Ozai’s brand of narcissism seeing it as a challenge to his authority. Ozai who disdained love in favor of power and control.

“The Boy in the Iceberg” contains another love story between two people from opposite sides in their depiction of Zuko and Katara in the crystal catacombs. I wrote before about how I’ve seen interpretations of this that say that the Fire Nation was trying to portray zutara as an “inferior” Water Tribe woman falling for a “superior” Fire Nation man - essentially saying that the play is in favor of zutara as a piece of Fire Nation pro-colonization propaganda - but the problem with this is that that isn’t how zutara is depicted in the play. The play mocks zutara by portraying Zuko as submissive and subservient to Aang, and Zuko is later killed, as he is currently a traitor and threat to the Fire Nation. Thus, the “romance” between Zuko and Katara is not being depicted as supporting the superior masculinity of Fire Nation men, but rather portraying Zuko, who willingly chose to dissasociate himself with the Fire Nation, as emasculated and submissive to other, “lesser” men and aggressive “foreign” women.

This is a complete mockery of the real connection that Zuko and Katara had in the catacombs, the kind of love that is inherently subversive because it requires Zuko humbling himself in front of Katara and admitting that he was wrong, and working for her forgiveness. It is the kind of love that the Fire Nation under Ozai’s rule rejects. The kind of love that is truly transformative, revelatory, and brings light to the darkness. The kind of love that creates rather than destroys, that unifies rather than divides. That is humble and not prideful. That’s the appeal of zutara.

[astradrifting]

GRRM really created so many parallels and foreshadow using the DoD characters that honestly we could just figure the asoiaf ending by analyzing it. My favorite is the Aegon III-D@ny parallels, the fact that one of his closest allies was a face-scarred Master of coin Lannister who ended as Hand to Bran' parallel character just make it so obvious its funny.

Oh my god I didn’t even realise Tyland Lannister was initially on the greens’ side! I’m not super fond of Tyrion ending up as Hand, but you’re right that it’s so obviously meant to reference him. There’s so many parallels that it’s a little crazy. I don’t want to say that the second Dance will end exactly as the first did, it’d be a little too neat if history repeated entirely, but you can see so many echoes of it even in the show’s bastardised ending.

“The broken, shattered realm suffered for a while yet, but the Dance of the Dragons was done. Now what awaited the realm was the False Dawn, the Hour of the Wolf, the rule of the regents, and the Broken King.”

(TWOIAF, Aegon II)

I’m not sure what the False Dawn is going to parallel to, it refers to the period of time after Aegon II’s death but before Lord Stark got to King’s Landing, when people thought that peace had finally come. It kind of brings to mind the War for the Dawn, though personally I think that the threat of the Others will be resolved before the Dance is over. The Hour of the Wolf is obviously about House Stark’s rise back to power, and the Broken King is Bran - though if he actually becomes known as Bran the Broken I might end up committing violence ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

The parts about Lord Corlys Velaryon are why I’m so hopeful that Jon’s book ending will be completely different from the show’s. He’s arrested for Aegon II’s death by Cregan Stark, even though Cregan had previously declared for Rhaenyra, because as TWOIAF puts it, “to kill a cruel and unjust king in lawful battle was one thing. But foul murder, and the use of poison, was a betrayal against the very gods who had anointed him.”

Corlys didn’t deny his guilt, and expressed no regret. “What I did, I did for the good of the realm. I would do the same again. The madness had to end.”

Cregan Stark declared him to be guilty of murder, regicide, and high treason, and he was sentenced to execution. But many spoke in his defence, even people who had fought against him in the Dance. Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Corlys’ granddaughters and Aegon III’s half-sisters, convinced Aegon to issue an edict pardoning Lord Velaryon, which Alysanne Blackwood then convinced Cregan to let stand. Lord Velaryon was pardoned and even restored to his offices and honours, made one of the king’s regents and given a place on the small council.

Corlys’ words definitely could be Jon’s as well, a much more in-character declaration post-D@ny’s death than the drivel GoT tried to feed us. I was worried for a bit that this would be how Tyrion is let off scot-free, but Baela and Rhaena, who were vital to his release, are such obvious Arya and Sansa stand-ins, and they’re certainly not going to expend any effort in helping Tyrion. So Corlys’ circumstances more likely lays the groundwork for how Jon will be freed and remain in political power, while Tyland frankly inexplicably becoming Aegon III’s Hand after he was in favour of brutally killing him parallels Tyrion managing to fail up, as a way of reconciling the old regime with the new one.

This makes Tyrion becoming Hand more palatable IMO. Either Jon and Tyrion both should have been punished or neither should have been punished, not the travesty where Tyrion gets everything he’s ever wanted while Jon is exiled to a Watch with no purpose and a Wall that’s already half-collapsed, so what exactly can it protect against? I suppose they were afraid of seemingly rewarding Jon for killing d@ny, especially if pol!Jon had been revealed, but most people noticed how nonsensical his ending was, and it just led to ‘Bloodraven/Bran is the real villain’ takes anyway.

(Side note: Asha/Yara basically still being loyal to D at the end annoys me so much, and made no sense. Jon did more to help save her by giving Theon that pep talk than D@ny did. Maybe it was a leftover from her taking Victarion’s role in the story, but in no reasonable world is anyone going to listen to the Ironborn who brought the Fire threat over in the first place.)

Of course Tyland Lannister isn’t actually Hand for long, given that he dies barely two years later from Winter Fever, feared and hated, alone except for a maester and King Aegon. It might be an indication that Tyrion will face a similar fate, that he’ll die after he’s seemingly won, exactly what he threatened Cersei with:

“A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid."

(ACOK, Tyrion XII)

So that I can stop talking about Tyrion, here’s some facts about Rhaena and Baela that are obviously meant to reference Sansa and Arya, so much so that it feels a little bit like GRRM is winking and going “See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Did you see??”:

- their descriptions: “Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela was lean and quick; Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride...” + “Baela was wild and willful”, “more boyish than ladylike”, and kept her hair cropped short as a boy’s

- Rhaena spent most of the Dance in the Vale, where she lived in relative comfort as the ward of Lady Jeyne Arryn. Baela was a dragonrider and so moved between Dragonstone and Driftmark, but was captured on Dragonstone when Aegon II descended upon it

- Rhaena was favoured to be queen after her brother, considered more qualified than her wild sister

- Baela liked to spend time with “unsuitable companions” she would bring to the Red Keep - including a comely juggler, a blacksmith’s apprentice whose muscles she admired (!!!), a legless beggar, a pair of twin girls from a brothel, an entire troupe of mummers once

- After her brother’s regents tried to marry her to a lord 40 years older than her, Baela escaped the Red Keep by climbing out of a window, trading clothes with a washerwoman, then walking right out of the front gate. She ran away to Driftmark and married her supposed cousin (though more likely he was her half-uncle), the legitimised bastard Alyn Velaryon, which might have had me worried about j0nrya if Alyn weren’t best known for being a daring sailor who went on many voyages, including sailing the Sunset Sea, until he was finally lost at sea during Aegon IV’s reign. Alyn’s mother was also called Mouse, for being “small, quick, and always underfoot.”

- another fun fact about Alyn: he’s a bad haggler, and had to agree to a high ransom and many concessions in order to get Prince Viserys returned to Westeros. This automatically disqualifies him as a Jon stand-in, because as we all know, Jon Snow can haggle like the best of fishwives.

- My absolutely favourite detail that has my jonsa heart singing - Rhaena was more dutiful than her sister and would have married a man that the king and council chose, saying that as long as he was “kind and gentle and noble, I know that I shall love him.” She was able to marry her first choice, whom the regents didn’t immediately approve of but that they ultimately accepted  - Ser Corwyn Corbray, the brother of the Lord Protector of the Realm, a second son (!) whose late father had gifted him the Valyrian steel sword Lady Forlorn (!!!)

And as a treat for @istumpysk, some similarities between Rickon and Viserys II!

- the youngest child of their family

- separated from their older brother after they were forced to flee their home, trying to get to safety while their other brothers and mother were at war

- worshipped their oldest (half-)brothers, but were closer to the brother nearest their age

- spends the war stuck on an island, populated by people closely linked to their family’s origins - Skagosi are descended mostly from the First Men, while Viserys was on Lys, where the blood of Old Valyria still runs strong

- sought by/held hostage by a powerful and wealthy family, who will treat them well but whose intentions are dubious

- will be brought back from exile by an upjumped bastard/commoner from a port town who was raised to lordship and became their monarch’s chief admiral

- after they are returned, long after the wars and crises, is happily welcomed as the heir to their older brother’s throne (shhhhh just let me have this, let the baby live)

Thanks for the ask!

[butterflydm]

wot reread: lord of chaos (prologue)

spoilers through lord of chaos. this one is longer than normal because I was not willing to split the prologue into pieces. I’m sure I’ll have to do it with later ones, lol.

1. Starting with the biggest tease of the Forsaken, Demandred. We get an inside look at Shayol Ghul and how things are run there: pretty nasty. People being sacrificed to create weapons; it’s bitter cold but so dry that the moisture is practically sucked from your mouth when breathing. Unpleasant place! Apparently used to be a lovely island retreat back in the Age of Legends. Hey, Demandred, ever miss the Age of Legends? Ever regret helping to screw all that up?

2. A lot of this terrible stuff was kinda created by Aginor, iirc. The ‘forgers’ who make weapons out of human sacrifices and the Trollocs (and by extension the Fades) etc.

3. I am trying to remember if we ever find out what was UP with Shaidar Haran. Mr. Super Weird and Extra Creepy Fade. I do not remember his deal, if we ever learned it.

4. Shayol Ghul/the Pit of Doom isn’t the location of The Bore, where the Dark One touches the world, but the Pattern is thinner here, so The Bore is more easily sensed. Also, Demandred is kinda... getting off? on being around the Dark One. So, that’s... I guess part of the appeal of staying on the side of the Shadow? I also want to note that YET ANOTHER Shadow/Seanchan parallel has popped up: The Day of the Return vs The Return. Ravens, moons, very big on ‘lessers’ groveling to their ‘betters’, big on maintaining a constant level of paranoia and fear, using pain vs pleasure to train people in proper behavior, and now we have The Return as well, when they will come back in glory to Show Them All and Rule Over Them. I am so curious about the intended meaning behind all the Shadow/Seanchan parallels.

5. Demandred tells The Dark One that Rahvin is dead, Lanfear and Asmodean have vanished, and Moghedien missed a meeting with Graendal. TDO says Asmodean is dead and good riddance the traitor (essentially) but he’s kinda bummed he can’t bring back Rahvin but even TDO can’t revive people from balefire (implied: he CAN revive from other things). Demandred feels anger and frustration from TDO. And TDO called Rand “my ancient enemy”. Also, hmm. The description of how freely using Balefire during the War of Power also ‘unraveled reality’ and using it again like that would mean ‘no world to rule’ in the future. Ah. And then he gets some instructions from TDO.

6. We flip to a Nynaeve PoV. Siuan is suddenly wearing embroidered dresses with a low neckline, the universal Jordan symbol of “she has it hot for a guy and thus immediately starts adjusting her appearance to hopefully appeal to him”. *sigh* Anyway, Nynaeve is studying Siuan and Leane in hopes of figuring out how to heal them being stilled.

7. The reveal that Nynaeve is using her hidden a’dam link with the captured Moghedien to channel is pretty well done. Narratively clever, I think. Magic science talk from Elayne: a’dam work by creating “absolutely identical matrices” between the two people being linked. Moghedien informs them that cutting the connection to the True Source used to be called ‘severing’, before the Aes Sedai gendered it and split it into ‘stilling’ for women and ‘gentling’ for men. Nynaeve is annoyed at the random AoL knowledge but I want to Know More. Pls let Moghedien talk, Nynaeve. We learned that a severed channeler can still use the bracelet half of an a’dam - which makes sense. It’s the genetic potential to channel that matters, I suspect, not actually being able to form a connection, which is why learners who have never touched the Source themselves are the sul’dam.

8. Yeah, the difficulty in Salidar is that they’re trying to get the Aes Sedai there to support Rand without giving away that that’s their agenda. It does sound very frustrating. To add to the frustrations: an embassy is being sent to Caemlyn and Elayne is not only not allowed on it, she’s not even supposed to mention it again. Because they will not ‘risk’ letting the ‘Daughter-Heir fall into the hands of the Dragon Reborn’. *screams in frustration* But Siuan says the real reason is that they won’t want to let her go until she’s a full Sister and ‘belongs’ to the White Tower, essentially, which is... honestly also very frustrating on so many levels.

9. It’s kinda heartbreaking to read the difference between holding saidar and holding tainted saidin. Anyway, the Aes Sedai in Salidar (including Our Group) are very nervous/wary/scared of Rand’s amnesty for men who can channel.

10. Elayne’s two points: a. as Daughter-Heir, she SHOULD be there if her mom is dead or missing, to reassure the people that the succession is intact; and b. she is one of the very few Tower-related women that Rand might actually trust are SUCH good points and I am, honestly, very offended on her behalf that she’s treated as a child instead of a politician here. Because she is thinking politically as well as with her heart. She would be the ONE PERSON (apart from Nynaeve) that they could send with the embassy that would make Rand have an immediate favorable reaction. It would be genuinely smart in so many ways to send her along, but the Aes Sedai are so tradition-bound and fearful that they won’t even consider the idea.

11. The Aes Sedai are panicked over Rand being too powerful, too quickly and... and then deciding he doesn’t need them. Which I think is the real issue. They don’t want to reach out to support Rand unless they feel like they can deal from a position of strength. They want him to believe that he needs them more than they need him. And that’s exactly the thing that Moiraine screwed up over and over -- she tried to place herself in a position of power over Rand and he balked and pushed her away and resented it. It wasn’t until she stopped trying to control him that she was able to have any influence over him at all as an advisor. Moiraine has reached legend status among the Aes Sedai in Salidar for taking out two of the Forsaken, but sadly none of them are aware of the lesson that Moiraine had to learn in order to ACTUALLY be someone Rand was willing to trust.

12. Elayne is informed that nine Aes Sedai will be going to Caemlyn... and Min. Being sent to have her talent potentially help Rand, but a secret to the sisters. Nynaeve is so protective of Elayne and Rand’s relationship here! But, also, wow, who... who told Nynaeve that Min was in love with Rand? Because Nynaeve immediately jumps to calling Leane out as an asshole for throwing Min going to Rand in Caemlyn in Elayne’s face like that, and Min’s feelings for Rand are talked about as a Known Thing. Did Siuan or Leane let it spill or did Elayne tell Nynaeve or... it does seem clear that no one told any of these three about Min’s viewing of the three women, but Siuan and Leane DO know that Min ‘saw’ that she would love Rand. lol, did Mohedien just make a half-hearted attempt to convince Nynaeve to join the Shadow? That was kinda funny.

13. It really does feel so narratively unkind on Jordan’s part for there to be so many good reasons for Elayne to go to Caemlyn but not only is she not allowed, but the woman that she knows is in love with her sorta-boyfriend IS allowed to go and she’s absolutely NOT reconciled to the idea of sharing him and certainly not enthusiastic about it. Min’s presence is turning my polycule fantasies into a harem instead, as always, lol. On the plus side, Elayne has been working out how to make ter’angreal, so that’s neat.

14. Wow, and the embassy is leaving the very same day that Elayne found out about it. And she only found out about MIN leaving with it because of Leane, so if she hadn’t heard it from Leane, she wouldn’t have found out about that until Min had already left Salidar. ...I still do not get why Elayne feels like she ‘must’ choose the Green because she already bonded Birgitte. She’s a Secret Warder, Elayne! She also thinks about how there are so many tricks and lies among the Aes Sedai in Salidar. DESPITE THE THREE OATHS, ELAYNE! THE OATHS ARE POINTLESS, ELAYNE. lol, sorry, I feel strongly about this.

15. Elayne evaluating Min’s potential attractiveness to gauge if Rand will go for her -- would be cute if it were in a supportive ‘yay poly’ way but kinda sad in the actual intended way. Min says she also only found out about the embassy this morning and that Siuan claims she’s being sent there to spy on Rand. (x) doubt. Siuan knows that Min won’t send back info on Rand. Elayne literally considers the idea of tying Min up with the Power to prevent her from leaving with the embassy... yeah, she’s not into it . The idea of the wot polycule is incredibly my thing and I love some of the individual relationships (basically the triad of relationships formed by Rand-Elayne-Aviendha) but in practice it, uh, yeah. It’s definitely a harem, unfortunately, and the harem-ness of it really is very driven by the Fate Says Thou Must nature of Min’s viewing. The weirdest thing (to me) is that there IS a poly structure in place that DOES require an enthusiastic buy-in (the Aiel system, even if it is unfortunately limited to sister-wives in Jordan’s version) but we lean on Min’s reluctant ‘but we must share even if we don’t want to’ structure instead. I have high hopes for the show, though, due to Alanna-Ihvon-Maksim.

16. Elayne tells Min not to tell Rand about the viewing, because he’ll decide that means that the Pattern is forcing their relationship and it’s not what they really want and noble sacrifice, etc. She really does know Rand so well. MIN, otoh, doesn’t know Rand at all and assumes he’d be thrilled to have two/three hot girls on tap at all times. The contrast in how well Elayne understands Rand as a person vs Min... not doing that is so strong here, before Min and Rand meet up again. I’m very curious if she’ll actually understand Rand better once they’ve met up again or if Women and Men Just Can’t Understand Each Other continues to get in the way. Anyway, Min’s terrible pie metaphor does make me glad that Aviendha Got There First. Aviendha wanted Rand DESPITE her viewing (which actually made her hostile towards him for quite a while), despite it going against her honor, despite all her good sense, etc. Basically the exact opposite of Min, who loves Rand BECAUSE of her viewing. And I find the ‘despite’ angle much more appealing than the ‘because’. (though Elayne and Rand are still my favorite because they fell for each other entirely naturally, with no knowledge of any prophecies at all)

17. Oh, man, this bit at the end.

Elayne: Let’s talk about something other than Rand. Literally ANYTHING happy that isn’t about Rand.

Min: But Rand is my whole personality now, Elayne.

I mean, that really is essentially their conversation at the end there. When Elayne asks to talk about ‘something happy’ that isn’t about Rand, Min can think of NOTHING except Rand-related things. That’s so depressing! Get a hobby! A non-Rand-related hobby!

18. Oh, hi, Faile. I have to admit, while I was reading TFOH, I did not really think at all about Faile and Perrin at all, or miss them. But let’s check in with the newlyweds! Anyway, just to check in:

The Bashere/Aybara newlyweds constructing a manor house much larger than any other house in the Two Rivers is a totally cool and proper Lord thing to do, because you gotta make sure you have the best of everything. That’s just How You Lord 101 and is definitely not a sign of ego.

Elaida building a palace on the White Tower grounds (a place that already has very tall buildings) is a horrific sign of her ego and how she’s overstepping her place in the world.

It’s all about the scale, I suppose. Elaida should have stuck to an elaborate manor house.

19. ...she’s holding court. Faile is holding court in the Two Rivers. Our egalitarian farming community has a court now. How did they go from “hey you’re a fairly good war-leader” to holding court in, like, a couple of months? A few months? idk how long it’s been. And she does it every day! I actually kinda hate what this plot line does for the Two Rivers as a place. I liked the Defense of Two Rivers fighty-fighty part of the plotline in TSR but I am not a fan of “let’s just turn this place into feudalism”. I’m honestly on Perrin’s side at this point: “the idea of passing judgment on people he had grown up among horrified him”. Cheers to that, bro. Anyway, there are a lot of refugees from other places ending up in the Two Rivers these days.

20. Faile’s first ‘judgement’ is to tell the two women in conflict to go to the Wisdom to sort things out. aka the exact procedure that they used to have in place before they arbitrarily decided they wanted a lord and lady. And Faile thinking that the people of Two Rivers ‘seemed to have forgotten she was an outlander’... you’re “my lady” to them. This is not a Two Rivers thing. This was imported. But Jordan seems to have this weird idea that lord/ladyship is an inherent thing that automatically comes along with all these random in-born urges from the ‘peasants’ who actually desperately want a lord above them. WHY do the people of the Two Rivers want to call him Lord Perrin? We know why Hurin wanted to call Rand ‘Lord Rand’ -- it was from the culture he grew up in. And the people wanting to call Mat a lord are also from cultures that already have those things. Why do the Two Rivers folk spontaneously want a lord? And Faile even thinks of these audiences as mostly a waste of time and yet... here we are. And, wow, HATE that the village Wisdoms “turn into simpering girls around Perrin” (according to Faile). Wow.

21. Yeah, Faile is All About enforcing her newly-born Authority over the Two Rivers and teaching them the proper way to behave around Lords and Ladies, even though Perrin explicitly hates and dislikes the people of the Two Rivers behaving that way around him! This marriage appears very incompatible right now. I don’t doubt that they’re in love, I suppose, but, wow, they want very different things from life.

22. No, seriously, why are the four village Wisdoms all hot for Perrin’s body now? They’re smoothing their skirts and fixing their hair at the thought of him. It seems so... random? I guess it’s part of the Perrin-Casanova glow-up that he got in TSR, when he retroactively had the best dating life in the Two Rivers, prior to leaving with Moiraine. Anyway, we do finally see Perrin again, after holding court with Faile for several pages, and he mentions that he’s feeling the ta’veren tug from Rand. She talks of duty and means lordship, but when he hears duty, he thinks of Rand. Interesting that he feels it now -- the Pattern reaches back in time, I guess. I’m guessing he didn’t mention to Tam and Abell WHY he was leaving, since he hasn’t actually told them that Rand is the Dragon Reborn. I’m honestly not sure how long it’s been since the last scene in the Two Rivers (timeline-wise) -- sounds like it may have been a few months?

23. Gawyn PoV now. Today, I’m thinking about the Younglings vs the Band of the Red Hand, which were both ad hoc groups constructed in the middle of a battle based on need. But the Younglings were the result of a single group splitting into pieces in a ‘civil war’ scenario, while the BotRH involved different sides merging to form a more culturally-diverse unit. But they’re both fighting groups under a young, charismatic leader that has a reputation for winning and is gaining recruits at a swift rate. And both of them are trying to use the knowledge of the past (Gawyn: every soldiering book he could find in the White Tower; Mat: the memories of past soldiers) to fight the wars that will soon be upon them.

Anyway, the remnants of the Shaido, led by Sevanna, are here to form an alliance with the Sisters leading the embassy to Rand in Cairhien. Which obviously is major warning bells for readers that the embassy is not on the up and up, though not for Gawyn. He thinks Elaida legit is planning to announce honest support for Rand. Ah, and here we have the Random Peddlers whose second-hand news that Rand totally killed Morgase Gawyn takes for Definite The Absolute Truth No Doubt. “...rumors on everyone’s lips sometimes had a way of being true” ...it was one person, Gawyn. But he does kinda break a little when he thinks that Elayne might be dead too, potentially at Rand’s hand. He is a Very Traumatized Young Man. Anyway, now he thinks he maybe wants to kill Rand.

24. On the Aes Sedai side, we learn that at least two of the sisters are Black Ajah and we also learn, in a casual aside comment, that there are some sisters “following behind” aka more than nine sisters are going to Cairhien. They’re also hoping they can find a way to get Gawyn and his Younglings killed while they’re all out here.

On the Shaido side, we learn that Sevenna is trying to think of a quiet way to assassinate Desaine, the Wise One that is willing to disagree with her and thinks she shouldn’t be playacting as a Wise One when she hasn’t been to Rhuidean. Sevenna has THOUSANDS of Aiel with her. Why are there so many Shaido? And they are fully planning to betray the Aes Sedai and take Rand for their own. And that Sevanna had an odd meetings with a wetlander man who gave her a cube that a channeler can use to get control of Rand, per his words.

25. Morgase is in Amadicia, with the King there. We are reminded, as we’ve been in pretty much every segment. That it’s Really Hot. Morgase isn’t having a great time and it gets worse then the Lord Captain Commander of the Whitecloaks shows up. He brings the news that ‘Gaebril’ is dead, killed by the Dragon Reborn, and offers her five-thousand soldiers to take Andor back from him. He also makes his argument to her that Rand is a false Dragon and that Aes Sedai do all this channeling for him. We also learn that Lady Dyelin is the next in line for the throne if both Morgase and Elayne are dead. He leaves her with the info that he will be posting Whitecloak guards here, where she is staying.

Niall HAS convinced himself of his own story, btw. He absolutely believes not only that Rand is a false Dragon but that the Dragon Reborn isn’t a real thing. Okay, the Trolloc Wars were two-thousand years ago, per Niall here, and Mat’s earliest memories are four or five hundred years before that. So, 2500 years. Okay, got it. Niall DOES believe in the Last Battle, tho. He blames pretty much EVERYTHING on the Aes Sedai in his internal narration. Anyway, he is sending the Questioners to pretend to be Dragonsworn in order to create resistance against Rand.

26. And, then we are back with the Forsaken again. Semirhage and Mesaana are having a meeting and waiting for Demandred. It has been seventeen days since Demandred went to Shayol Ghul, where we started the prologue. Mesaana can’t put her finger on why she doesn’t like Semirhage. lol, we get the story of how Demandred was Second-Best to our LTT in everything his entire life and thus turned to the Shadow. The last of their group that is meeting together is Graendal. She says that Sammael won’t be coming because he doesn’t trust any of the others and possibly not even himself. We learn that Mesaasa is a little over three-hundred and was considered to have just entered early middle-age. lol, Mesaana’s reason for going to the Shadow being that she was denied a research post and had to be a TEACHER instead and now she will TEACH THEM ALL. Oh, Forsaken. “Demandred was the gambler”.

There’s a narrative echo in the EF5 kinda reflecting the Forsaken but not going to the Shadow. Theoretically, Mat, our gambler, COULD feel like Demandred did, always in Rand’s shadow, etc. That was the angle that Melindhra tried to push at him. Except that he didn’t care if he was in Rand’s shadow or not. He was never trying to outmatch Rand’s accolades (which makes a Certain Scene not really ring true for me) or compete with him. Melindhra tried to tell Mat that he was in Rand’s shadow and he was basically... uh, yeah, okay, kinda just want to not die here. He didn’t care. And that’s why he wasn’t Demandred.

It’s interesting to me that Mesaana thinks about how “Lews Therin minted his own luck” because she connects that to Rand, but I feel like, as a reader, that reads much more Mat to me. And I think that... spreading out of ta’veren... is a good thing for the Pattern? Though not always for me, because I want Main Characters Interacting With Each Other lol.

27. And in the last section of the prologue, we meet Osan’gar and Asan’gar. They are 100% not going to be in the show, which is probably for the best. Anyway, they exist and the souls of the two dead Forsaken from EotW stuffed into new (stolen) bodies. Creepy Fade is giving them orders. And we are finally done with this very long prologue! (yes, I know they will get longer lol)

[sepublic]

The Bad Batch’s Coming of Age

        Just... Omega willingly went back to Kamino to save Hunter, after he promised he’d never let anyone take her there! And nobody forced Omega to, Hunter DID protect her in that regard... She went of her own volition to save HIM, and not because he failed to save her!

        When Hunter made his promise, we all thought someone would eventually capture Omega anyway... But no, in a rather telling and mirrored coming-of-age moment, she chooses go back to Kamino on her own terms and agency, with her own friends and family- Because she’s going to give Hunter that same promise herself now!

        The fact that Omega has grown, that she can now decide for herself what to do- That she can go to Kamino as she pleases, this once-dreaded place of imprisonment, and choose to head there... Choose to return of her own free will, which means Kamino is no longer a prison for her, but a place Omega has the power to enter and leave willingly. Not that she’s going to be coming back anytime soon after that, but...

        She has basically conquered her past, a place where she had no freedom and control- And returned a victor with the family that’d help her, with the power to go about as she pleases, to save Hunter. Omega has freed Hunter from his imprisonment there, as well as Crosshair in the process- The one clone she left behind and couldn’t do anything for.

        ...Omega really HAS grown, hasn’t she? She’s no longer a scared kid but coming back to Kamino like it’s her own damn place to conquer... It’s just too bad there’s nothing to left to go back to. What a metaphorical death for Tipoca City, once a cradle for Omega, a childhood cage... And now that she’s grown up and is free, she’s gotten to visit it one last time, free Crosshair and Hunter, before she leaves it behind forever, in the depths of the ocean.

        Displaced, forced to grow up and leave behind home- Not many clones can say they were able to do this on their own terms, that’s for sure. Again, I keep saying it- But with Omega being a kid, with the Bad Batch and clones in general being so young... It really is a coming-of-age story as they learn to leave behind their upbringing, their ‘parents’ in the form of the institution that fed and housed them, gave them purpose.

        And now they’ve grown to find a sense of independence, and their OWN place in this galaxy... They’re growing up now, when for years they’d stagnated, in contrast to their accelerated physical growth. The Bad Batch and others have stepped out into the world for themselves and get to explore who they are... Even Crosshair, who fell back on that ‘upbringing’ to give him a familiar sense of purpose and structure.

        But that’s not the family that made him feel like he belonged, it was the Bad Batch. THEY made him feel like a part of something, the Kaminoans nor the Empire ever provided that. He and the clones lived for each other, and less the literal purpose of their creators. And now Crosshair has the chance to leave and grow up, and find himself like the rest have.

        I guess it’s fitting. With all of the themes of adolescence, childhood, nurturing and cradles- Of parenthood, as shown with Hera and Cham and Eleni... Cut and Suu Lawquane with their kids. Guardians such as Fennec, familial ties one is born into, as they try to make a name for themselves with Roland Durand. Kids like Muchi growing up and being freed, returned to those who DO care... This really IS a story about growing up, about the familiarity of the womb and leaving that.

        It’s about parents and ‘mothers’ like Nala Se, and it’s a show that really delves into the messed up realization; That the clones are all really still kids, who are being abandoned by their ‘parents’ and now have to fend for themselves, and figure things out together.

        Because they’re not alone, they’ll always have each other, and they go back for each other- Rex for Gregor, Hunter for Omega, and now vice-versa in a full-circle moment. Just like how Rafa and Trace lost their parents and were abandoned by both the Republic and Empire, these two siblings still have each other. It’s a story of mentors and guardians, unconventional such as Cid...

        This very much IS a story about growing up, in a new and unfamiliar world- And looking back now, at the more complete picture that is the nearly-completed first season, I much more appreciate it now. It’s about making new friends and connections (such as the Lawquane kids and Hera, children of Omega’s age) and fending for yourself, but also your true family who always have your side, because eventually they’ll always come back for you;

        Just as Avi Singh saw himself as responsible for Raxus, and vowed to return one day, as an older figure whom the people trusted... Just as the people of Ryloth look towards Cham Syndulla as a guiding figure, as Hera has a mentor in Gobi Glie as well. Caleb had his own mentor and arguable mother figure in Depa Billaba, who taught him as his master, only to lose her; But he’ll find his family with Hera eventually, who will also have something to say about losing her own mother.

        ...Star Wars really IS about family, and finding that- Either lost and biological, and/or found, making that for yourself. Omega lost her family in the Bad Batch since they were too young to remember, only to reunite years later when they were adults- And I’m sure she can resonate with Crosshair on feeling like she lost her family and was left alone, only to reunite after all this time, reintroducing herself of her own accord. A dark parallel that is mirrored with Crosshair also initiating a reunion of his own, too.

        Star Wars is about death and endings, but also new beginnings- The Republic died and the Empire was born, yes... But there’s always another generation, a new hope so to speak, to nurture and look forward to. Look ahead, and don’t cling to the past- That’s a very Jedi mantra, is it not?

        The time has passed, now to move on and embrace change, a new beginning... And eventually an end that will repeat the cycle, over and over. Child is nurtured by parent, only to grow up and become a parent themselves, with their own child- As they remember lovingly how they were raised and grew up, and continue that sense of love and familiarity to others as well.

        The spark lives on like in any Rebellion, a true passing of the torch. I can genuinely see this show ending with a similar cycle as things come around for Omega, as she came back around for Hunter- As Omega is grown up in an epilogue and becomes a mentor and parent to someone else. In a weirdly poetic sense, her experience of watching her younger siblings become her older parents, has now been mirrored in herself.

        And she fondly, sweetly remembers those who cared for her, as she sees herself in this new kid, and becomes a parent like those who raised her. Just like old times... Just as Din Djarin raises Grogu, this is a story of parenthood and family, and growing up. That familiar dynamic and love will always live on, even as the people in the roles pass and change. It truly is a timeless tale, a story from a long time ago made modern and ever-new, just as the Force transcends time itself.

[medusinestories]

Onwards to the episode in which we get to see Flint and Silver each having a very bad day (as well as two literal dicks that nobody had asked to see).

Black Sails VII (s1 ep07)

- We open on Pastor Lambrick's sweaty face as he intensely rehearses the Easter sermon and he’s obviously eaten up by what he did with Miranda. His sermon, unsurprisingly, focuses on sin, keeping sin hidden, and the hell that awaits the sinner. Which leads us nicely onto Flint, who’s distracted (by his own sin? by thoughts of Miranda? both?) during a meeting with Eleanor. Eleanor is pissed that Miranda let Richard Guthrie send a message to the Andromache and then waltz into town to close up his business; Flint tries to take the heat off Miranda, once again protecting her (at this point, he may not know the contents of the letter).

- During this meeting, Flint is startled when Silver first speaks up to say that the mob in the street was bad - clearly Silver is a sort of intruder in this meeting. But Eleanor, after Silver reminds her by unsubtly clearing his throat, tells Flint that he’s not to harm Silver because he was instrumental in setting up the Consortium. Silver looks so pleased with himself in these scenes, and Flint quite defeated when he tells Silver to follow him back to their camp. I love it.

- To parallel Flint/Miranda’s Sulky Sex scene from ep4, we have Anne/Rackham’s frustrating/disconnected sex scene. It shows us a few things about them mainly that Anne wants to keep a lot of control over what happens, hence Rackham being tied up (though of course this might also be his kink), her wearing a shirt that covers up most of her body, and the reverse cowgirl position that means that she’s both in control of what happens and completely avoids eye contact. The position reminds us of the Flint/Miranda scene, where Miranda was also on top, but their scene involved more eye contact (yes glaring counts, he’s still intensely focused on Miranda), gentle touching (on Miranda’s side) and her being naked and open to him. Another parallel is that both Flint and Rackham aren’t in the right frame of mind for sex, Flint being angry and Rackham lost in a sea of worries (and probably also somewhat angry/disappointed at Anne for forcing him into the plot to kill their crewmates). The difference between Flint and Rackham is that while Flint doesn’t seem to have any trouble performing, Rackham is miles away and doesn’t even notice that he’s lost his erection - again. Anne is frustrated by this, and apparently knows him well enough that she offers to put something up his arse, but he’s clearly not in the mood, and she leaves in a huff, abandoning him all tied up as a sort of revenge for his performance problems. Whatever the problem is between them isn’t put into words (because Anne can’t yet, for starters), unlike the one between Flint and Miranda. The intimacy between Rackham and Anne, so often described as close partners, seems much more distant to me than the one shown between Flint and Miranda. I’m not sure whether it’s because of anyone’s sexual orientation, or just the fact that they’re fucking but they’ve never discussed the big important things, such as Anne’s identity/feelings/etc.

- In this episode, Dufresne gains a lot of power: with a freshly (and badly) shaved head and a new tattoo, he’s been promoted to Quartermaster on the Walrus in Billy’s place. And very quickly he has a problem to deal with: Randall revealing that Silver stole the page. Gates had actually already told this to Dufresne, as is revealed at the end of the episode, which might explain why Dufresne is relatively calm during the whole conversation, while DeGroot wants Silver and Flint hanged and Howell is surprisingly ruthless: he brings up the idea that it may be better to kill off Randall in order to get to the treasure, if they can’t make sure he’ll keep quiet about Silver being the thief. Dufresne is actually quite kind towards Silver in the scene where he puts Silver’s memory to the test - a test that could result in his death if he fails it and that Silver constantly grumbles against (I love his grumbling!). Basically, at this point Dufresne remains quite a sympathetic character, which will change a lot as the show goes on, especially after Jannes Eiselen had to leave the show (such a sad story, RIP Jannes).

- In the meantime, the Flint and Gates relationship is crumbling. It's sad to see, especially since they're shown sharing chuckles as they talk about Dufresne's appointment in the beginning of the episode. But then Gates brings up the subject of Miranda and demands explanations about the letter Billy found. We're not shown exactly what Flint answers, but it's clear that he's actually trying his best to give him an explanation without incriminating Miranda too badly. The sad thing is that Flint is actually telling the truth: he actually wasn't involved in any betrayal of his crew and and can only guess at Miranda's motivations. But the fact that he's lied time and again in previous situations, including on the Maria Aleyne where he claimed Lord Alfred drew a weapon on him (and Gates secretly verified that this was a lie), and used men as pawns to advance his and Miranda's plans, is now catching up to him. Flint seems truly hurt when Gates accuses him of using the men for his own purposes, and turns spiteful, telling Gates that he should have been "a better father" to Billy and helped him "understand the world he was living in" (suggesting that such a forthright character as Billy can't really survive in a world of pirates who are all ready to stab each other in the back). After that slap in the face, Gates says he's exhausted from Flint and threatens to take it to the crew. Somehow, this pushes Flint to bare all: he tells Gates about his plan to keep a part of the treasure and use it to build up Nassau, depicting himself as a sort of saviour, doing it for the men's good: they'd rather be rich men in a safe place than dead thieves hanging from a noose. Gates sees this as delusions of grandeur, and tells him that while he'll see the Urca plot through, after that they're done. I actually think he sees Flint’s point, since he doesn’t just throw him to the crew, but won’t admit that out loud. The whole of this scene hurts bad, because you can tell that Flint is desperate and sad to be losing his closest ally and friend, and that Gates is hurting from the loss of Billy and exhausted from the toxic relationship he has with Flint, where he's played enabler to his manipulations for years.

- While Flint and Gates’ alliance is breaking, Silver has to forge one with Randall or die. Randall finds out in the beginning of the episode that he’s been voted out of the crew. This is apparently due to DeGroot’s fears that Randall could be a fire hazard, which the crew took disproportionately to heart. Randall is furious with Silver, who smugly tells him that in these situations, a setback often comes with a new or unexpected opportunity. He’s right, but at this point he doesn’t know that he is the opportunity Randall’s going to latch on. Randall reveals that Silver is a thief, and Silver denies it, saying that Randall is both a halfwit and was in a haze of opium when he heard what he thought he heard; he even tries to convince Randall that he was mistaken (this, my friends, is gaslighting). However, by revealing that Silver was the thief, Randall sets a chain of events into motion which could either end with his death (if Howell has his way, since Randall is an inconvenient witness) or Silver’s (if DeGroot tips the balance, not trusting Silver to remember the coordinates and not wanting to sacrifice Randall for nothing). Silver figures out that these are the outcomes, and tries to talk sense into Randall by making a deal with him: he’ll care for Randall and make sure he can stay on the ship. But it’s only when Silver finally admits that he is the thief and that Randall was right, that Randall accepts the deal. Later, Silver realises that Randall might have orchestrated the whole thing: he’s now got Silver to serve him, doesn’t have to take any risks on the ship, and gets to remain with the crew. Silver wonders if Randall is a genius rather than a halfwit (a word thrown about a lot to describe him). And it seems quite obvious, considering what happened, that Randall still has strong survival skills (an amputee with impaired cognitive skills doesn’t stand a chance of survival outside a crew and he must be aware of it), that he still has a good memory and an ability to pick out useful information and that he’s aware enough of what’s going on to be upset by the crew’s rejection and Silver’s attempt to gaslight him. I think it’s important to recognise that Randall is more than a comic relief or a grotesque character: he’s a disabled man who's lost parts of his cognitive ability and is struggling to survive.

- This episode focuses on Vane facing his past. He seeks out the island where he grew up and its master, Albinus. I’d forgotten or never really registered that Albinus was a pirate and that the men who work for him were mostly his crew - and likely slaves (or children, hence Vane?) that he managed to capture/press into service. He’s retired from pirating and set up a system where his men cut down trees for timber all day, without wages. It’s not clear exactly how he holds so much power over these men, although it seems that everyone is terrified of him. He’s extremely strong physically, seems shrewd, speaks rather well, and his tattoos suggest that maybe he’s involved in some kind of ritual (truly religious or just for show?) which would make him all the more scary to superstitious people. Vane is clearly still frightened: he barely makes eye contact and practically stutters when he first tries to make the deal with Albinus, which is that he’ll take some of Albinus’ men as crew and send Albinus part of their earnings as tribute. It says a lot about Albinus that Vane, after years of having run away, is still so scares that he’s willing to pay him a tribute. But he changes his mind as he stares at a boy bearing the same brand as he does: he tries to persuade the men that Nassau is a pace of pleasures rather than hard labour, and confronts Albinus. The fight is brutal and ends with Vane buried naked, just after Albinus tells him that he’s proud of him. But of course Vane wouldn’t be Vane if he didn’t rise from the dead at the last minute and kill Albinus, goaded on by his inner Eleanor voice.

- In the meantime, Mr Scott returns to Eleanor, apologising for what he did, telling her he betrayed her out of love. However he also reminds her of his slave status: technically, he belongs to her. The argument upsets her, and he quite cleverly uses this moment to ask her to free the slaves who were on the Andromache. And it works: by the end of the episode, she’s made arrangements for the men to work on ships and has bought the women’s freedom and found them jobs in her tavern. But Mr Scott has still decided to leave Eleanor to join Hornigold’s crew, to refrain from meddling with Eleanor’s affairs, since he disagrees with her so strongly re: the Urca. Hornigold approached him earlier in the episode, and the introduction to that scene is quite interesting: Hornigold says to Mr Scott “I’ll need to know your secret” and Mr Scott looks startled and frightened. It seems that he’s startled because he’d been giving food to the slaves, but in light of S3, it could be a much greater secret that’s being referred to. Mr Scott is relieved when he realises that Hornigold is simply talking about tolerating Eleanor, who he clearly can’t stand.

- Flint’s bad day continues, of course, with the big confrontation he has with Miranda. He’s furious about the letter (of which he now knows the contents thanks to Gates), telling her that it could have got him killed, or destroyed the plans they’d made and asking her whether she was trying to embarrass him. This sounds so weirdly petty, and yet it also sounds exactly like the kind of argument that would come up in a bickering couple. Miranda answers that she was trying to help him out of that life, because she wants to move on. This is where Miranda utters the famous “there is no life here, there is no joy here, there is no love here”. I noticed that, covered by Flint yelling at her, and distorted because her voice has gone very shrill, Miranda says another line, which sounds like “you used to love, then”. If that really is what she says, it’s extra-extra-extra heartbreaking to hear (if someone wants to check it for me, it’s around 35:40). It’s obvious that Flint and Miranda’s views on life are very different, and I can’t help but think back to the fact that, as a carpenter’s son from the country, Flint has had to struggle all his life to become who he is. So when he says that you can’t get a life without having a war, and Miranda tells him he’s wrong, she’s speaking entirely from the point of view of her privilege. She’s never needed to fight as hard as he has to be happy, because she got extremely lucky in marrying Thomas. And when she says that Thomas would agree with her, I’m certain she’s right. But life has never been like that for Flint, and there’s no way he’ll ever entirely agree with their point of view. Rewatching this scene is tough, btw, because they both have great points, they’re both hurting so much, and there’s so much to take in between the body language, the facial expressions, the tones of voice and the actual words that it’s a whole whirlwind. And it feels very, very real.

- It’s absolutely hilarious to see Rackham get robbed by the whores taking advantage of his lack of knowledge (and research). He should absolutely have done a better job and has no clue how to run a brothel. He’s lucky Max takes things in hand after having heard from Idelle that the girls were taking advantage.

- Then we have the beautiful Drunk Flint scene. Eleanor notices him feeling very sorry for himself after Gates has pretty much broken up with him and he’s still reeling from fighting with by Miranda. I think Flint feels very misunderstood here. He thought that he was doing something good, to save Nassau and avenge Thomas, and doesn’t understand why they can’t see it, why they only see the terrible methods he uses to reach his goals. So he’s full of doubt, clearly wondering if he’s the villain of the story, and puts the question to Eleanor: is their plan worth it? Eleanor is the only person who still believes in him, which leads us to the only scene that I would ever call straight-baiting. Flint hovers near Eleanor, breathing heavily, and a variety of emotions play over her face during this moment of tension, as she seems to think this is leading to a kiss. It does, he gives her a chaste little forehead kiss and leaves. All the elements are in place to make your average viewer start shipping these two. I actually find it hilarious that the ship barely exists in the fandom (though I wasn’t there in the beginning of the fandom and I guess the viewership changed a lot between S1 and S4).

- The scene with Flint and Gates glaring at each other from their respective ships and Parson’s Farewell playing in the background... epic! We know this is the beginning of a big struggle between them, especially since we find out that Gates has pretty much decided that he’ll hand Flint over to the crew once they get the money. But nnnnggh that scene! The ships leaving on their hunt! Awesome and heartbreaking!